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At the time of his graduation from the Mekteb Harbie , the famous 
Military School of Constantinople. 













WHEN I WAS A BOY IN 
TURKEY 


CHILDREN OF OTHER LANDS BOOKS 

Independent Volumes With Characteristic Illustrations 
and Cover Designs i2mo Cloth 

There are many books about the children of other countries, but 
no other group like this, with each volume written by one who has 
lived the foreign child life described, and learned from subsequent 
experience in this country how to tell it in a way attractive to Ameri¬ 
can children — and in fact to Americans of any age. 

WHEN I WAS A BOY IN CHINA, By Yan Phou Lee 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN ITALY, By Marietta Ambroei 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN JAPAN, By Sakae Shioya 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN GREECE, By George Demetrioe 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN PALESTINE, By Mousa J. Kaleel 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN BELGIUM, By Robert Jonckheere 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN RUSSIA, By Vladimir Mokrievitch 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN ROUMANIA, By Dr. J. S. Van Teslaar 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND, By Cornelia De Groot 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN MEXICO, By Mercedes Godoy 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN ICELAND, By Holmfridur Arnadottir 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN PERSIA, By Youel B. Mirza 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN SCOTLAND, By George McP. Hunter 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN NORWAY, By John 0. Hall 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN SWITZERLAND, By S. Louise Patteson 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN DENMARK, By H. Trolle-Steenstrup 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN INDIA, By Satyananda Roy 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY, By Ahmed Sabri Bey 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

BOSTON 










WHEN I WAS A BOY 
IN TURKEY 


By 

AHMED SABRI BEY 


ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 









.k'o 


Copyright, 1924, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

All Rights Reserved 

When I Was a Boy In Turkey 



SEP "6 1924 


Printed in U. S. A. 


IRorwooO press 

BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 


©Cl A 8 07 203 

fvto i 





CONTENTS 


I. 

My Country and My Language 

9 

II. 

My Family and My Home 

20 

III. 

The Mosque. 

44 

IY. 

Stories and Games 

60 

Y. 

Festivals. 

77 

YI. 

Agriculture and Industry . , 

98 

YII. 

Ceremonies. 

114 

VIII. 

Brussa and Constantinople 

124 

IX. 

An Historical Chapter . 

144 

X. 

About Myself .... 

158 


6 



* 







ILLUSTRATIONS 

Ahmed Sabri Bey (Ahmed Sabri) Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

A Boy of Constantinople ... 20 

Pilgrims in Mosque at Mecca . . 48 

The Mosque of St. Sophia . . .58 

The Ancient Hippodrome of Byzantium 58 

A Caravan in Asia Minor . . .76 

An Itinerant Farm Laborer . . .98 

Vendors of Yogourt . . . .98 

Sledge Used for Threshing . . . 108 

The Turkish “ Merry-go-Round ” in Asia 
Minor.108 

A Rug Factory.112 

Looking up the Bosphorus from Stamboul 132 

Section of the Grand Bazaar of Stamboul 138 

The Fountain of the Mosque of Sultan 
Ahmed.142 

The Tomb of Sultan Selim in Stamboul 142 

Interior of Mosque of Sultan Ahmed . 160 


7 



/ 


WHEN I WAS A BOY IN 
TURKEY 


CHAPTER I 

MY COUNTRY AND MY LANGUAGE 

To a boy of the West, Turkey, no 
doubt, brings thoughts of strange people, 
strange customs, a strange religion, and 
a strange history. If I can make these all 
a bit familiar to my Occidental brothers I 
shall feel that my efforts in writing this 
book are well rewarded, for most of the 
strife in the world is due to a lack of un¬ 
derstanding. The West must understand 
the East, and the East the West if they 
are to live together in peace. 

I am now more than ever happy that 
my boyhood was passed in the tranquil 
days before the Balkan Wars, which began 
in 1912 and which were followed by the 

Great War and the Greco-Turkish War ; 

9 


10 WEEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


leaving my country in a most unhappy 
state. 

My home was in Kemer, a town of 
about ten thousand inhabitants situated a 
few miles from the eastern end of the Gulf 
of Adramyttium, which opens into the 
iEgean Sea and the entrance of which 
is guarded by the Island of Mitylene, 
known in ancient times as Lesbos. In my 
country there are few roads and no rail¬ 
roads. We describe places as being so 
many hours away by donkey or boat, these 
being the two most common means of 
travel other than one’s legs. Kemer is one 
and a half hours by donkey from Adra- 
myti, a city of forty thousand population 
lying to the north. For this reason my 
town is called Adramyti Kemer to dis¬ 
tinguish it from numerous other towns 
called Kemer which are scattered through¬ 
out Anatolia. 

If you should visit Kemer on a day in 
spring, you would be impressed by its 
beauty. Coming from the sea on the back 


MY COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE 11 

of your donkey, you ride for half an hour 
through a fertile plain, deep green in its 
covering of wheat, barley, oats, and ses¬ 
ame. On approaching the town, great 
vineyards come into view, the young vine- 
leaves being fresh and clean, for the rains 
have just ended and the long dry season 
which lasts from May to October has only 
begun. The town itself shines like a 
mirror in the brilliant sunshine. Its white 
houses made of stone, covered with white 
stucco, and with red tile roofs, its mosques 
with their huge domes and graceful mina¬ 
rets, its cobbled streets just washed by the 
rain, and its tall blue-green cedars mark¬ 
ing the sites of the cemeteries, all help to 
give it an inviting appearance. 

You enter the town and in a few mo¬ 
ments you are in Beuyuk Charm, which 
means big bazaar. This forms the prin¬ 
cipal street, and along it are many coffee¬ 
houses as well as innumerable small shops 
with their entire fronts open to the pub¬ 
lic. Here one can buy everything needful 


12 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


for life in Asia Minor. One shop sells 
rugs, another mattresses, others blankets, 
cloth, furniture, pottery, and tools. There 
are whole streets of shops selling meat, 
vegetables, cereals, bread, and sweets. 

The coffee-houses are of especial inter¬ 
est. Here sit men of all ages and nation¬ 
alities as well as occupations. For ex¬ 
ample, there is a Greek from the interior 
who has no doubt come to town to sell 
some hides or sheep. He is dressed in great 
baggy blue trousers, with a short blue 
vest ornamented with black braid. On the 
back of his head he wears a black embroid¬ 
ered skull-cap. He talks with his Circas¬ 
sian neighbor, who is dressed in a long 
gray coat drawn in at the waist by a black 
belt ornamented with silver. In this belt 
is stuck a large dagger with a beautifully 
worked scabbard and handle. The Cir¬ 
cassian’s head-dress consists of a great 
lamb’s-wool kalpak at least a foot high. 
They both smoke from the same narghile 
which lies at their feet. The narghile con- 


MY COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE 13 


sists of a jar containing water through 
which the smoke is drawn. In the jar’s 
neck there is a bowl containing tobacco 
and a live coal. Sometimes as many as 
five or six men smoke from the same 
narghile , there being that number of long 
tubes terminating in mouthpieces running 
from it. At another table sits an old Kurd 
puffing away at his chabuk , a pipe consist¬ 
ing of an elaborately carved stem at least 
a meter long with a tiny bowl at the end. 
There are many others sitting about, each 
with his distinctive costume, for it is to the 
coffee-houses that all the men come to talk 
and smoke. They are the social centers 
for the men of the community. 

As you stroll through the streets of the 
town, you will notice the owners of the 
various shops sitting on the floor just in¬ 
side the entrances. They are continually 
smoking, and sipping tiny cups of Turkish 
coffee. The shops are mostly owned by 
Greeks, but the customers are mainly 
Turks, for of Kemer’s ten thousand in- 


14 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

habitants, seven thousand are Turkish and 
the remainder Greek, with a few Arme¬ 
nians and Jews. The bazaar is always 
busy. Many Turkish women can be seen 
going from shop to shop. They all wear 
the yashmak and petche . The first is the 
veil which covers their entire face except 
the eyes, and the second the head-dress 
which descends just to the waist. In 
Ivemer these are always white, while the 
rest of the costume is black. Usually a 
little boy or girl follows them with a basket 
in which all their purchases are de¬ 
posited. 

Passing through the town and continu¬ 
ing into the country, you come to the 
great olive groves which run on into the 
foothills of the Modia Mountains. These 
are covered with a vast carpet of wild 
flowers. Throughout the groves and in 
the foothills are scattered many little vil¬ 
lages in which nearly all the houses are 
built of mud bricks. Many of these vil¬ 
lages are built on the sites of ancient 


MY COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE 15 


Greek cities, portions of the ruins of which 
still protrude from the ground, and 
here and there you will see a house with 
an ancient Greek marble slab for a door 
or window-sill. As you go up higher into 
the mountains, the olive-trees change to 
pine-trees and instead of villages there are 
huts of the shepherds, which are made of 
stones and pine-branches and the folds of 
the sheep, which consist of great masses 
of thorn-bush. Numerous flocks of sheep 
and goats can be seen grazing on the 
mountainside. They are guarded by 
large, ferocious dogs which attack all 
strangers but are easily driven off with 
stones. 

You stop in your climb and look about 
you. To the west is Kemer and the blue 
iEgean. To the north is Mount Ida, 5,752 
feet high and mentioned by Homer in the 
Iliad, for on the other side of it and 
twenty miles to the north lies the ancient 
Troy, of whose glory Homer sang and 
which flourished 1,800 years before Christ. 


16 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


To the south about thirty miles away can 
be seen the outline of Bergama, the an¬ 
cient Pergamum, the capital of one of the 
most powerful states of the ancient world 
and the home of one of the first seven 
Christian churches, called Pergamos in 
the Revelation of St. John. So, all in 
all, you can see that my country is one 
of beauty, historical interest, and agricul¬ 
tural wealth. 

My language is Turkish, and it is very 
difficult to gain a good knowledge of it. 
Its basis is the language of the Ottoman 
Turks, a tribal people who, coming from 
the plains of Central Asia in the twelfth 
century, conquered all of Asia Minor, 
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, North 
Africa, and Southeastern Europe as far 
as Austria. Their language has been 
greatly modified by the people they con¬ 
quered and with whom they came in con¬ 
tact. Arabic and Persian have made espe¬ 
cially large contributions to the modern 
Turkish tongue. We have taken our re- 


MY COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE 17 


ligion, Mohammedanism, from the Arabs, 
and with it much of their language. Our 
method of writing we owe also to the 
Arabs. It resembles to a certain extent 
stenographic writing. Following is a 
famous Turkish proverb written in Turk¬ 
ish script: 


It says, “ You can’t cook pilaf by gab¬ 
bing! ” which is equivalent to the English 
proverb, “ Talk never accomplished any¬ 
thing! ” Pilaf is the staple dish of the 
Near East. It is made of rice and is in¬ 
cluded in nearly every meal, like potatoes 
in the West. To read Turkish, you begin 
at the right-hand side of the page and 
read to the left. Therefore, the last page 
of books written in the languages of the 
West is the same as the first page of books 
written in Turkish. Years ago in order 
to know Turkish well, one had to study 



18 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


both Arabic and Persian, but during the 
last fifty years our literary men have 
given much thought and study to our lan¬ 
guage, and its grammar has been fixed. 
The Persian and Arabic words are now 
being adapted to the Turkish grammar. 
This has proven to be very difficult, and 
whenever possible a purely Turkish word 
is used. The modern preference for 
Turkish is quite a contrast to the prac¬ 
tice of the ancient authors who regarded 
Turkish words as vulgar, and used the 
Arabic and Persian expressions on every 
possible occasion. There is some agitation 
among us to use the Latin alphabet. 
Turkish is a Turanian language, like 
Hungarian and Finnish, while Persian is 
an Aryan language, like most of those of 
the West, and Arabic is a Semitic lan¬ 
guage, like Hebrew. To write modern 
Turkish, which is an amalgamation of 
these three languages, in the Arab script 
offers a great many problems. Arabic has 
but few vowel sounds, and therefore but 


MY COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE 19 

few vowel signs, while Turkish has many 
vowel sounds. Thus the great difficulty 
is to write Turkish, with its many vowel 
sounds, using the few vowel signs found 
in Arabic. Some additional vowel sounds 
have been adopted, but they are not ade¬ 
quate, as one sign still represents numer¬ 
ous sounds. For this reason, the same 
outline in Turkish script may signify a 
number of different words and can only 
be understood in connection with the words 
that accompany it. However, in spite of 
all these problems yet to be solved, it is 
fair to say that the Turkish boy of to-day 
has a much easier task in school than his 
father or grandfather had. 


CHAPTER II 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 

I am called Ahmed Sabri. These are 

both Arabic names. Ahmed means “ the 

greatly praised,” and is one of the names 

applied to the Prophet Mohammed, the 

founder of our religion. Sabri means 

“ patient.” Many boys have only a single 

name, and this is true of practically all 

girls. In Turkey we do not have family 

names, but in case two men have the same 

name and we wish to distinguish between 

them, we say, “ Ahmed the carpenter,” 

“ Ahmed the shepherd ” or “ Ahmed from 

Adramyti.” Still more common is the use 

of nicknames such as Kara (black) 

Ahmed, or Ivodja Bourun (big nose) 

Ahmed. I myself was sometimes called 

Ahmed Sabri Karamanoglou because my 

ancestors originally came to Kemer from 

Karaman, a district in Asia Minor con- 

20 


s t 

mm 

«■ 



A Boy of Constantinople. 






MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


21 


taining the city of Konia and at one time 
an independent kingdom under the Sel- 
juk Turks who conquered Asia Minor be¬ 
fore the coming of the Ottoman Turks. 
The suffix “ oglou ” means “ a son of,” so 
Karamanoglou means “ a son of Kara- 
man.” 

A little information about my ancestors 
may interest you. The great-great- 
grandfather of my father, whose name 
was Mustafa Aga and who was a chief 
of the Janissaries, came from Karaman. 
You may know that the Janissaries were 
the special soldiers of the Sultan. In the 
early days of the Ottoman Empire they 
were made up entirely of Christian boys 
who were taken at a very early age from 
their parents, brought up as Moham¬ 
medans, and taught absolute fidelity to the 
Sultan. They were the best of soldiers 
and played a great and important part 
in all the conquests of the Turks. At first 
they were not permitted to marry, but 
later this rule Avas disregarded. They 


22 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


then married, had families, and their sons 
in turn became Janissaries. Mustafa 
Aga fought for Sultan Selim III in 
Hungaiy. On his return he brought with 
him an Hungarian noblewoman whom he 
married to his son Osman Aga. The Sul¬ 
tan, as a reward for valor, made Mustafa 
the Governor of Ivemer and gave him 
much land in and about the town. His 
son Osman with his bride Elizabeth came 
to live in Kemer with him. Both Osman 
and his son Mohammed Kadir, my grand¬ 
father, became Janissaries. 

Sultan Selim III was deposed in 1807 
by the Janissaries, who had become so 
powerful that instead of serving the Sul¬ 
tan they ruled him. His successor, 
Mahmoud II, known as the Reformer, 
had all the Janissaries in Constantinople 
killed on July 15th, 1826, and their or¬ 
ganization was permanently destroyed. 
Mustafa Aga to save his life ran away 
from Kemer to Fokia, a town near 
Smyrna, where he died shortly afterwards. 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


23 


His son Osman Aga and grandson 
Mohammed continued to live in Kemer, 
but merely as landowners who occupied 
themselves in looking after their property. 
The title Aga, which means noble, dis¬ 
appeared from our family, my father be¬ 
ing known as Osman Zeki Effench. Ef- 
fendi is a title supposed to be applied to 
men only of noble birth, but to-day in 
Turkey it is used the same as Mister in 
English. 

My father was a very studious man, 
being one of the “ Ulema ” or doctors of 
sacred law and theology. He graduated 
from the Seminary of Mohammed Fatih 
in Constantinople. This seminary is at¬ 
tached to the Mosque of Mohammed 
Fatih in Constantinople, which was built 
in honor of the Sultan who took Con¬ 
stantinople from the Greeks in 1453. 
However, my father made no professional 
use of his knowledge, giving all his time 
to his home and the directing of his estate. 
My mother’s name was Zelika, which is 


24 WEEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

the name of Potiphar’s wife in the story 
of Joseph, the son of Jacob, that is told 
in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, and also spoken of in the Koran, the 
Mohammedan sacred book. She was 
called Zelika Hanoum, the latter being 
the title applied to women as Effendi is 
applied to men. My mother could neither 
read nor write, which unfortunately is 
true of nearly all the women of Turkey 
both rich and poor. If you should ask 
one of my countrymen the reason why no 
opportunities for education are given to 
girls, he would no doubt reply, “ What 
is the use of education to a woman? ” 

My father never met nor talked with 
my mother before their marriage. Every¬ 
thing was arranged by my grandfathers, 
and my father first looked on the face of 
his wife in the privacy of the bridal cham¬ 
ber after the marriage ceremony had been 
completed. The Revolution of 1908 has 
lessened the strictness of this custom in 
the large cities. We will speak more of 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


25 


this later. In spite of their being total 
strangers before their marriage, my father 
and mother loved each other very dearly. 
I never heard nor saw them quarrel. 
They were models of mutual respect and 
consideration. 

Father was a large, strong man with a 
light complexion. He formed quite a con¬ 
trast to Mother, who was small, with 
beautiful black hair and an olive com¬ 
plexion. Father’s usual costume was that 
of an hodja (religious teacher). It con¬ 
sisted of a long dark-blue robe reaching 
from his neck to his feet and a head¬ 
dress of the common red fez around which 
was wound a white turban. This is the 
characteristic head-dress of all men identi¬ 
fied with religion in a professional capac¬ 
ity as hodja , immam (priest), or mufti 
(religious judge). Mother’s costume, 
when about the house or visiting friends 
near by, consisted of a mashlak (kimono) 
of Brussa or Damascus silk with a design 
of golden thread woven into it. She had 


26 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


mashlaks of many different colors and in 
one of them she always appeared much 
more gay and beautiful than in the severe 
street costume of white veil and head¬ 
dress, and black blouse and skirt. 

My mother’s father was Ismail Bey, the 
chief of the gendarmes or police of Kemer. 
Bey is a title which years ago was auto¬ 
matically given to men in the army with 
the rank of major or above and also to 
certain grades of civil officials. It was 
also applied to rich men, but to-day the 
title has lost all significance and anybody 
can call himself Bey . Ismail Bey was 
much younger than my grandfather Mo¬ 
hammed Kadir who died in my eighth 
year and was said to be nearly one hun¬ 
dred years old. My grandmother, Sherifa 
Hanoum, was Grandfather Mohammed’s 
second wife. She was a Circassian, as 
was also my mother’s mother, Emina 
Hanoum. A large percentage of the 
wives of wealthy Turks are Circassians. 
They are especially sought after because 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 27 

of their great beauty. Their homeland is 
in the Caucasus, from which great num¬ 
bers have been driven by the persecution 
of the Russians. 

Our house was made of brick and stone. 
It had been built by Mustafa Aga when 
he was governor of Kemer. As my father 
was the oldest of the three sons of Grand¬ 
father Mohammed and Grandmother 
Sherifa, he brought his wife to live with 
his parents, and when they died the house 
became his. Grandfather Mohammed 
had an older son, my uncle Mustafa, but 
as he was a son by a previous wife, he was 
ineligible to the succession of the family 
mansion. My uncles Hadji Edhem and 
Ahmed, younger brothers of my father, 
went when they married to live with their 
wives’ parents and later built houses for 
themselves. 

Mustafa Aga built a house worthy of 
his position. It was an extremely large 
house for Kemer. An archway, through 
which a road ran, divided the ground floor 


28 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TTJBKEY 


into two parts, there being three rooms on 
each side. One of these was a bathroom 
with a stone floor under which a fire could 
be built. This was a typical Turkish bath 
and resembled a great oven. In this lower 
part of the house my grandfather and 
grandmother lived, as they were too old 
to climb stairs. Here also was the dining¬ 
room. The upper floor had eight rooms, 
of which four belonged to the women. 
Into these rooms my mother always re¬ 
treated when men, other than relations, 
came to visit my father. My brother 
Ismail Jenani, five years older than my¬ 
self, and I had separate rooms on this 
floor. Here, too, was the reception-room 
where all guests were received and where 
they slept if they stayed for the night. It 
was the largest and most richly furnished 
room in our home. All the rooms were 
furnished without chairs or beds. The 
floors were covered with beautiful orien¬ 
tal rugs, and about the walls were low 
divans reaching not more than a foot 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


29 


above the ground, which were also covered 
with carpets. Many cushions were scat¬ 
tered about, and these with the divans 
served both as chairs and beds. 

On one side of our house we had a large 
garden, surrounded by a high wall. The 
garden was very beautiful with its numer¬ 
ous flowers, and its palm, fig, apricot, and 
mulberry trees. It contained two small 
buildings. In one my mother raised silk¬ 
worms, feeding them leaves from the mul¬ 
berry-trees, and in the other our old serv¬ 
ant Emina did the cooking and lived with 
her family. She was a negress and a de¬ 
scendant of a slave of Mustafa Aga. She 
was always very good to me and I loved 
her very much. Her name, the same as 
that of the mother of the Prophet Mo¬ 
hammed, means “ faithful,” and as a little 
boy I often found safety in her arms. 

On the side of the house opposite the 
garden was a small building of three 
rooms. It was here that poor pilgrims on 
their way to Mecca, traveling hodjas, and 


30 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


beggars could stay for the night. It had 
been built by Elizabeth, the Hungarian 
wife of my great-grandfather Osman 
Aga. She is still famous in Kemer after 
three generations for her generosity and 
goodness. To the wayfarers who stopped 
here, my father ordered our servant Emina 
to give food twice each day. One of the 
five great commandments of Allah given 
to us through Mohammed is to give alms. 
All good Mohammedans, no matter how 
poor, give alms. Perhaps we are not very 
practical in the way in which we obey this 
commandment, for there has sprung up a 
class of professional beggars numbering 
tens of thousands. It would be better if 
we did as is the custom in the West, that 
is, give our alms to great philanthropic 
associations who would use them where 
they are most needed. 

In front of this wayfarers’ hostel there 
was a deep stone basin about twenty feet 
in circumference with a fountain in the 
center. I shall never forget this basin as 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


31 


in it I almost lost my life. When about 
eight years old I was playing along its 
edge and fell into the water. Not being 
able to swim, I immediately sank. My 
mother saw me from the window of her 
apartment and leaning out shouted, 
“Save my boy! Save my boy!” My 
cousin Ismail Bey, a boy of eighteen 
years, was just passing. He ran to the 
basin, jumped in and rescued me. I was 
already unconscious, but after great ef¬ 
forts on the part of the hakim (doctor) 
I was brought back to life. Unfortu¬ 
nately my cousin as a result of his wetting, 
it being winter, contracted pneumonia 
and died. This made me very unhappy, 
and for a long time I could not look at 
his mother, Fatima Zekia, my aunt, for I 
felt as if I were guilty of her son’s death. 

As a little boy I spent most of my time 
in the garden. I seldom went out except 
to school at the mosque or to accompany 
my father on his journeys of inspection 
about his property. I had many play- 


32 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


mates, all the little boys and girls of our 
neighbors, but my favorite was Zekia, two 
years older than I and the daughter of 
our servant Emina. She was as black as 
coal, but always smiling and laughing, 
thus continually showing her fine white 
teeth. We were great friends. All day 
long we ran and played together. We 
helped our old Greek gardener, Baba 
Yanni (old man John), whenever he had 
anything that we could do. But what de¬ 
lighted us most was to listen to the father 
of Zekia, Hadji Kadir, when he told of 
his pilgrimage to Mecca. 

To go to Mecca, the birthplace of the 
Prophet Mohammed, is another of the five 
great commandments of our religion. 
Every man, if he wishes to stand in the 
grace of Allah, must go if he possibly can. 
If he cannot go himself, he can profit 
somewhat in the eyes of Allah by helping 
some one else to make the voyage. Every 
one who has made the journey is called 
hadji (pilgrim), and is regarded with 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 33 

great respect as a holy man. Hadji 
Kadir was the watchman of my father’s 
property, and he made the pilgrimage as 
the bodyguard of my uncle Hadji Edhem 
Bey. 

Hadji Kadir’s tale was always inter¬ 
esting, being full of picturesque and 
dangerous incidents, and we never tired of 
listening to it. He told of the long trip 
from Smyrna to Jidda, on the Arabian 
coast of the Red Sea, by way of the Suez 
Canal. The voyage took two months and 
was made in a sailboat which stopped at 
scores of places on the way to take on new 
passengers and to give those already 
aboard a chance to replenish their stocks of 
food and water. Then came the journey 
from Jidda to Mecca in a caravan of ten 
thousand pilgrims, all barefooted and bare¬ 
headed and clothed in white sheets. The 
caravan was attacked by bands of Bed¬ 
ouins who were driven off only after a 
stiff fight. We listened with mouths and 
eyes wide-open to the recital of the won- 


34 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


ders of Mecca and to the tales of the pil¬ 
grims he had met from far countries. 
There were representatives from Mon¬ 
golia, Turkestan, Java, the Congo, Sene¬ 
gal, an oasis in the middle of the Sahara 
desert, China, India, Morocco, Egypt, 
Persia, South Africa, and the Philippines. 
Some had taken two years to make the 
voyage from their homes. The descrip¬ 
tion of the great camp of the pilgrims in 
the Valley of Arafat brought from us ex¬ 
clamations of wonder. The story of the 
dangerous voyage through the desert to 
Medina where Mohammed is buried, the 
descriptions of the attacks which were a 
number of times made on the caravan 
by bands or robbers, and finally the his¬ 
tory of the homeward travels through 
Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor stirred 
us to a high pitch of excitement. Hadji 
Ivadir loved to tell us of his pilgrimage 
just as we loved to listen. 

In the summer time we always ate in 
the garden. We sat on rugs spread on 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 35 

the ground, and the food was set before us 
on a low table. We never used either 
knives or forks, the only eating instru¬ 
ments employed being spoons, and these 
only for soup. For other dishes we used 
our fingers, and all of us ate from the 
same dish. This arrangement was not so 
unsanitary as it sounds. We always ac¬ 
companied our meals with youfka, an un¬ 
leavened bread which my mother baked 
herself. It was baked in large, round 
forms and was very thin. Every Turkish 
woman prides herself on the size and thin¬ 
ness of her youfka. Just before eating 
it is moistened with water and becomes 
very flexible. We took pieces of this in 
our hands and covered it with pilaf or 
whatever other food was being served. 
Thus we ate the pilaf and youfka together 
and whenever we helped ourselves from 
the common dish we used a fresh 
piece of youfka to do so. In short, we 
made the youfka serve as a fork. Often 
I found it less fatiguing to take a whole 


36 WHEN I TFAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


youfka, put upon it a large quantity of 
pilaf or helva, roll it up into a roll, and 
eat it leisurely. This did away with the 
constant return to the common dish. It 
was a sort of Turkish substitute for a 
sandwich. 

We often had guests. Hassam Bey, 
the Kaimakan of the Kaza of Kemer 
(Governor of the County of Kemer) fre¬ 
quently dined with us accompanied by 
Beuyuk Hanoum (big madame), his 
wife. He was a Circassian and my father 
and he were like brothers and his wife and 
mv mother like sisters. In the winter we 
ate indoors. The room was heated by 
mangaLs, which are little stands made of 
copper and brass, often beautifully 
worked, and containing a pan of red-hot 
charcoal. We had no chimneys, stoves, or 
fireplaces in our house excepting the 
chimney and fire-box of the Turkish bath. 

1STo one ever enters a Turkish house 
with his shoes on. These are always left 
at the door. I think this is superior to the 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 37 

Western custom of keeping the shoes on 
in the house. It is easier to keep a Turk¬ 
ish house clean, as no dirt or mud is 
brought in from the outside on the shoes 
of its inhabitants or their guests. 

A Turkish boy is taught to respect his 
parents, especially his father. I would 
never enter a room where my father was 
or sit down in his presence without per¬ 
mission. When I did sit down, it was al¬ 
ways by kneeling and sitting on my heels. 
My father acted in like manner towards 
my grandfather till the day of his death. 
I do not remember having ever seen my 
father smoke, or drink coffee, in the pres¬ 
ence of my grandfather. My Grandfa¬ 
ther Mohammed was one of the great men 
of Kemer. When he walked by a coffee¬ 
house all rose to their feet as a sign of 
respect. He was a dervish of the Kadiri 
order. In Turkey there are many orders 
of dervishes. They are associations of re¬ 
ligious men with special beliefs, doctrines 
and ceremonies. They are sometimes 


38 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


secret and often become extremely power¬ 
ful. Their nearest counterparts in the 
Christian world are the monastic orders. 
Throughout Turkey there are numerous 
tekke (monasteries) where many der¬ 
vishes live, but by far the greatest number 
of them are scattered throughout the 
country in the villages and towns. My 
grandfather wore the costume of his 
order. It consisted of a black robe over 
which was worn a dark green cape. As 
head-dress he wore a white fez around 
which was w T ound an immense green tur¬ 
ban. He was a very religious man, pray¬ 
ing night and day and fasting often. 
From his room I could hear at all hours 
his deep voice repeating the Moham¬ 
medan creed, “ La ilahe illallah Mouham- 
mad resoul oullah.” This is Arabic and 
means, “ There is no God but Allah, and 
Mohammed is His prophet.” To repeat 
this creed is another of the live great com¬ 
mandments of our faith. Its repetition 
is believed to bring to the faithful the 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


39 


grace of Allah. On occasions the head 
of the tekke in Constantinople would 
come to visit my grandfather and the two 
would pray together for hours at a time. 

Grandfather Mohammed had little 
sympathy with the government and would 
have nothing to do with its officials even 
when they were relatives. When any one 
was put in prison for debt, it delighted 
him to pay what the prisoner owed and 
thus see the poor man liberated. He did 
this so often that it was a common thing 
in Kemer when one came to collect a debt 
for the debtor to say, “ Go collect from 
Pasa Bashir Karamanoglou! ” Pasa 
Bashir was a title often applied to my 
grandfather. It means market director, 
and he inherited it from his wife’s father, 
who held this position which brings with it 
the authority and responsibility of setting 
the prices for all commodities of general 
consumption such as bread and meat. 

A description of how I passed a typical 
day as a small boy will give you a good 


40 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

idea of the routine of our life. In winter 
we got up before dawn and went to the 
mosque for the first prayers of the day 
which come just before sunrise. In 
summer this would have necessitated get¬ 
ting up too early, so we performed our 
sunrise prayers in the guest-room. Father 
always led us in prayer. Immediately 
behind him stood my brother and I, and 
behind us my mother. In the chapter on 
the mosque I will explain to you in detail 
our method of praying. Prayer ended, 
we had breakfast which was almost as 
large a meal as dinner or supper. We 
often had tarhana soup which is made of 
flour and yoghourt. Yoghourt is a 
soured milk which is very popular 
throughout the Near and Middle East. 
Sometimes we had rice and milk. These 
were followed by jam, olives, eggs, and 
bread. After breakfast my father gave 
my brother and me an hour’s instruction in 
the Koran. At nine o’clock we went to 
school. I who was going to the Mekteb- 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 


41 


I-Iptidiieh or school for beginners which 
was at the mosque, took my dinner with 
me and did not return until evening. I 
ate my dinner with the other students in 
the mosque courtyard after midday 
prayers which were performed in the 
mosque. Our dinner hour ended, we 
continued our studies until two hours be¬ 
fore sunset when we were excused for the 
third prayers of the day. We returned 
home and just after sunset came the 
fourth daily prayers. Shortly after came 
supper which usually included pilaf with 
meat and some of the sweets for which 
Turkey is justly famous. Some of our 
best-known sweets are baclava , kadaif, 
and helm . They are extremely de¬ 
licious, but it would take too much space 
to explain their manufacture and I do not 
possess an adequate vocabulary to do 
justice to their taste. Two hours after 
sunset came the fifth and final prayers of 
the day. In winter, supper is not usually 
eaten until after these final prayers. 


42 WHEN 1 WAS A EOT IN TURKEY, 


To a Western boy the part that prayer 
plays in the life of a Turkish boy may 
seem astounding, but to us it is perfectly 
natural. I have already explained to you 
that three great commandments given by 
Allah through the Prophet Mohammed 
to the faithful are the command to give 
ahns, the command to make the pilgrim¬ 
age to Mecca, and the command to repeat 
the creed. The fourth is the command to 
pray five times daily. 

You will note that our whole daily pro¬ 
gram is regulated according to the posi¬ 
tion of the sun. The Turkish method of 
keeping time is based entirely on the 
sun’s apparent daily movements and not 
on the yearly movement of the earth 
around the sun as is the case with the 
system of time-keeping in the West. At 
sunset our day ends, and one o’clock in 
Turkey is one hour after sunset. As the 
sun sets at a different time every day, 
those who own clocks or watches must 
set them daily. However, this is not a 


MY FAMILY AND MY HOME 43 

great inconvenience, as few of the people 
of Turkey possess timepieces. This 
method of relying on the sun as a chro¬ 
nometer may not be suitable for a country 
where the skies are often cloudy, but in 
Turkey where the sun shines brightly 
most of the year it works quite well. It 
may be of interest to the reader to know 
that in the large cities they often have 
two town-clocks, one showing the time ac¬ 
cording to the Turkish system and the 
other according to the Western system. 
The one is called time “ a la Turkya,” 
and the other, 44 a la Franka.” The 
reason for this latter name is that 
Turkey’s first intimate contact with 
Western culture and science was through 
the French. 


CHAPTER III 


THE MOSQUE 

As you enter a Turkish town, the most 
prominent object is always the mosque. 
With its large dome towered over by a 
slender minaret it has an important place 
in the Turkish landscape. It occupies a 
still more important place in the life of 
the community. 

The mosque is primarily for prayer but 
it has other functions. Here in the build¬ 
ings surrounding it and within its court¬ 
yard are the Mekteb-I-Iptidiieh, as well 
as the Medrese (religious seminary) 
which is presided over by the mufti. 
Here^ too, the mektubji (public letter- 
writer) makes his headquarters. To him 
come all the illiterate of the town (ninety 
per cent of the inhabitants of Turkey are 

illiterate) when they wish a letter read or 

44 


45 


THE MOSQUE 

written. As courtship in Turkey is en¬ 
tirely in the hands of parents, the mek- 
tubji profits little from the writing of 
love-letters. No doubt if he practised 
his profession in an illiterate Western 
land he would gain much from this type 
of work. Since the Revolution of 1908 
the mosque is used as the place of voting. 
Also in times of disaster or war it is often 
turned into a hospital or barracks. 

When I was five years old my father 
brought me to the Mekteb-I-Iptidiieh of 
the Djami Keber (big mosque). We 
had six mosques in Kemer and this was 
the largest of them all. On turning me 
over to the teacher, Hadji Hafiz Hous- 
sein Effendi (Hafiz is a title conferred on 
any one who has memorized the entire 
Koran. The Koran is about the same 
in length as the New Testament.), my 
father said, “ The flesh and blood of 
Ahmed now belong to you. With them 
you may do as you like. Only his bones 
remain to me.” This is the Turkish way 


46 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


of saying, “ I give you my boy. His 
character and development are in your 
hands. Make of him a great and good 
man.” However, I often believe that 
Hafiz Houssein took my father’s words 
literally, for he often beat me with a large 
stick, as if my flesh were in very truth 
his property. 

Hafiz Houssein had also been the 
teacher of my father. He was more than 
eighty years old. He rode to school each 
morning on a white donkey which was 
said to be the oldest four-footed creature 
in Kemer. Every day one boy was dele¬ 
gated to take care of the donkey. He 
was excused from all lessons and was sup¬ 
posed to stay in the courtyard looking 
after his charge. Often the boy would 
tire of his responsibilities and run away 
to play. If he failed to return before 
Hafiz Houssein discovered his absence, 
he was in for a severe punishment. He 
would be put on his back on the floor and 
his bare feet held up in the air. Then 


THE MOSQUE 47 

the old teacher would take a stout cane 
and beat the boy on the soles of his feet. 
Many times after such punishment I was 
forced to crawl on all fours to the road 
outside of the mosque and beg one of the 
laborers of my father who happened to 
pass with a donkey to take me home. I 
never complained to either my father or 
mother and they never inquired as to the 
cause of the sudden loss of my power to 
walk. They understood, and no doubt 
thought me justly punished. 

The only thing that Hafiz Houssein 
taught us was the Koran. There were 
about ninety boys and girls in our class 
and all day long we sat on the cane mat¬ 
ting that covered the hall with our feet 
crossed under us and shouted as loud as 
possible verses from the Koran, simulta¬ 
neously moving our bodies back and forth 
in time with our voices. The Koran is in 
Arabic, and because it is believed to con¬ 
sist of the exact words of Allah to the 
Prophet Mohammed, it is not permissible 


48 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

to translate it into any other language. 
So you can imagine ninety little boys and 
girls memorizing day after day a lot of 
unintelligible sounds. Occasionally our 
teacher would explain to us the meaning 
of a verse, but this was not necessary, as 
the repetition of the words, regardless as 
to whether you know their meaning, is be¬ 
lieved to have great merit in the eyes of 
Allah. 

Perhaps a short story of the founding 
and growth of Mohammedanism would be 
of value here. It will be helpful for an 
understanding of Turkish life. 

About the year a. d. 570, Mohammed, 
the founder of our religion, was born in 
Mecca. Mecca had already been for many 
years a holy city. The people of Arabia 
worshipped stars and mountains and even 
trees and stones. In Mecca there was a 
temple known as the Kaaba. The corner 
stone of this temple was a meteorite which 
was worshipped as a god, in fact as the 
most powerful of all the gods. Therefore 



Pilgrims in Mosque at Mecca. 


















49 


THE MOSQUE 

every year for a certain length of time 
peace was declared among all the warring 
tribes and everybody who could went on 
a pilgrimage to Mecca to worship the 
meteorite god and the other gods in the 
Kaaba. In his youth Mohammed, who 
was an orphan, also worshipped the many 
gods of the Arabs. It is said he worked 
as a shepherd boy, but we know definitely 
that early in his young manhood he 
entered the employ of a rich widow named 
Khadija. He made many voyages with 
the caravans of his rich employer into 
Yemen and Syria. Here he met the 
Jews and members of some of the early 
Christian sects that were common in that 
part of the world in those days. While 
still a young man he married his employer 
Khadija, and until his fortieth year he 
lived quietly with his wife and family. 
At this time he became dissatisfied with 
the religion of his people and began to 
formulate a new faith for himself. His 
life took on a mystic quality. He had 


50 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


visions and composed poetry which he 
said was revealed to him by an angel. 
The central idea of his new faith was the 
belief in what he called the “ One True 
God.” He told his wife and close friends 
of his convictions and converted them to 
his belief. He began to preach in public. 
He attacked the idolatry of his country¬ 
men. He preached of the future life and 
of punishment in hell for evil-doers and 
the reward of paradise for all believers in 
the “ One True God.” For ten years he 
preached, being especially active in the 
pilgrimage season when Mecca was 
crowded with thousands of pilgrims from 
all over Arabia. Mohammed spoke of 
the prophets of the Old Testament and of 
Jesus. He had no doubt learned of these 
from the Jews and Christians he had met 
in his travels. Finally he claimed to be 
a prophet and the voice of the “ One 
True God.” He was making a great im¬ 
pression on the pilgrims. The citizens of 
Mecca began to see the destruction of the 


51 


THE MOSQUE 

city as the pilgrimage center due to this 
man who was destroying the faith of the 
people in the pagan gods. They planned 
to kill him, but Mohammed learning of 
their intention escaped, fleeing to Medina, 
a city north of Mecca and on the caravan 
route to Syria, where many converts to 
the “ One True God ” lived. 

The flight (Hegira) took place in the 
year 622 and it is from this event that the 
Mohammedan calendar dates, the year of 
the Hegira being the year one. Mo¬ 
hammed preached the doctrine of submis¬ 
sion to the will of Allah (One True God). 
In Arabic the verb to submit is “ Islam,” 
therefore the religion of Mohammed is 
known as Islam, and one who submits 
himself to Allah is known as a Moslem. 

Mohammed and the people of Medina 
fought with the people of Mecca for a 
number of years until Mohammed finally 
conquered, and in 629 he returned to 
Mecca as its master. From that time up 
to his death in 632 at the age of sixty-two 


52 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

his power gradually increased until he 
became master of all Arabia. Moham¬ 
med’s successors proved to be great sol¬ 
diers. In one hundred and twenty years 
they conquered Syria, Egypt, Armenia, 
Turkestan, North Africa, and Spain. In 
the year 750 a. d. the Moslem Empire was 
greater in extent than the Roman Empire 
had been in the heyday of its glory. This 
in great brevity is the story of the last of 
the prophets, as Mohammed called him¬ 
self. 

At noon our recitation was interrupted 
by the muezzin (holy crier) calling the 
faithful to prayer. He stood on a 
balcony high up on the minaret and in a 
trained voice of great beauty gave his call: 
“ Allah eekber, Allah eekber, eish hadon 
inne la ilahe illallah, eish hadon inne la 
ilahe illalah, eish hadon Mohammed re- 
sould oullah, hayyalesselah, hayyalesselah, 
hazzalelfelah, hazzalelfelah.” It consists 
of the Moslem creed “ God is great, God 
is great, there is no God but Allah and 


THE MOSQUE 53 

Mohammed is his Prophet/’ followed by 
“Hurry to prayer! Hurry to prayer! 
Hurry to redemption! Hurry to re¬ 
demption ! ” At the end of the call for 
sunrise prayer the phrase, “ Eesselat 
khaienn min ennewn,” which means, 
“ Prayer is better than sleep,” is repeated 
twice. The muezzin serves the same pur¬ 
pose as the Christian church-bell. 

Hafiz Houssein dismissed all his pupils 
and they went into the courtyard to pre¬ 
pare themselves for prayer. In the court¬ 
yard of every mosque there is a fountain 
where the faithful wash before presenting 
themselves to Allah. The rules for wash¬ 
ing are very exact. First you must wash 
your hands, mouth, nose, and face; each 
three times. This is followed by washing 
the arms to the elbows, the head, and the 
neck; each once. Finally the ablutions 
are ended by washing the feet three times. 
There are many regulations in regard as 
to just how the washing should be done 
and as to the water to be used. For ex- 


54 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


ample, one cannot use water from which 
a cat, dog, mouse, or donkey ha* drunk, 
as these are unclean animals. If a horse, 
cow, or ox has drunk of the water it makes 
no difference, as these are clean animals. 
The reason for washing before prayers 
is not hygienic. Cleanliness in the sense 
of being free from dirt has nothing to do 
with it, although it does have this practical 
result. As you will see later, Moslems 
believe in demons, angels, genii, evil 
spirits, etc., and by the ceremony of wash¬ 
ing before prayer it is believed that these 
are thrust aside and a man can thus come 
in direct contact with Allah. 

Our ablutions completed, we all fol¬ 
lowed Hafiz Houssein into the mosque. 
We removed our shoes at the entrance 
and carried them in our hand. The floor 
was covered with rugs carefully arranged 
in rows leading up to the Mihrab, an 
alcove in one wall indicating the direction 
to Mecca. When a Moslem prays he must 
always face the Holy City. We placed 


55 


THE MOSQUE 

our sfioes in long, low boxes provided for 
that purpose and standing in regular 
rows we waited for the immam to give 
the signal to begin. 

There is a unit of prayer which I will 
now describe. We have been ordered by 
Allah to offer four units for Him and six 
units for Mohammed every midday. We 
began our prayer standing up, looking 
straight ahead, and by saying in Turkish, 
“ My purpose is to perform midday 
prayers as Allah commands in four 
parts.” Then we said in Arabic, “ Allah 
eekber ” (God is supreme), raising our 
hands to our ears to signify that we put 
all material things aside. Next we 
crossed our hands over the belly below the 
navel, the right hand over the left and 
grasping the left wrist with the thumb 
and small finger. The girls crossed their 
hands on their chests. It is interesting to 
note in this connection that when we bury 
our dead we dig the grave of a man to the 
height of his navel and that of a woman 


56 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


to the height of her chest. Guarding this 
position, we repeated one of the many 
prayers of Mohammed which have come 
down to us and then a verse from the 
Koran. The latter preceded as always 
by “ Bismillah ir rahman ir rahim ” (In 
the name of God, the Merciful, the For¬ 
giving). Then we recited the Fahtiah. 
This is the most famous of all Moslem 
prayers. It forms the first chapter of the 
Koran and holds in Mohammedanism the 
same position that the Lord’s Prayer 
holds in Christianity. It is very beautiful 
in the Arabic. The following translation 
unfortunately lacks much of the beauty 
of the original: 

“ Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures, 
The most Compassionate of the Merciful, 
King of the Judgment Day. 

Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask 
guidance. 

Lead us in the true path, 

In the way of those on whom is Thy Grace. 
Not in the path of those on whom is Thy 
Wrath, 

Nor in that of those who have gone astray.” 


57 


THE MOSQFE 

The Fahtiah was followed bv another 
short verse from the Koran, and then we 
bent over, putting our hands on our knees 
and keeping our back straight. In this 
position we repeated three times, “ Sub- 
han Allah” (I praise Allah) and then 
rose keeping our hands at our sides. Con¬ 
tinuing we said, “ Semmiah Allah hou 
limen hamideh ” (Who praises Allah, 
Allah hears his praise) and immediately 
falling upon our knees and touching the 
ground with our foreheads we remained 
thus until we had said three tunes, “ El- 
hamdon lillah ” (I praise God). We 
repeated this another three times after ris¬ 
ing to our knees and again touching our 
foreheads to the ground. We then rose 
to our feet. This ended one miit of 
prayer. We repeated it four times for 
Allah and six times for Mohammed. Be¬ 
fore rising to our feet at the end of the 
last unit we turned to the right and ta 
the left and said to our neighbors, “ Sela* 
moun aleikoum ” (Peace and mercy 


58 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


upon you). They replied, “ Aleikoum es 
selam” (On you be peace). Our 
prayers ended, we went out into the court¬ 
yard to eat lunch. 

The schedule of prayer units for the 
other prayers of the day are as follows: 
morning prayers, two units for Allah and 
two for Mohammed; prayers two hours 
before sunset, four units for Allah and 
four for Mohammed; sunset prayers, 
three units for Allah and two for Mo¬ 
hammed; and prayers two hours after 
sunset, four units for Allah and six for 
Mohammed. At this last period three 
voluntary units are usually offered for 
Allah. 

You may wonder to what extent this 
schedule is lived up to. In my home and 
in the home of all my relatives it was re¬ 
ligiously observed. Not a single prayer 
was missed except for sickness or accident, 
and then on the first occasion additional 
prayers were offered with the request to 
Allah that he accept them in recompense 



The Mosque of St. Sophia. 

Stamboul. 



The Ancient Hippodrome of Byzantium 

Stamboul. 















59 


THE MOSQUE 

for those missed. If any one should 
allow a long period to pass without per¬ 
forming his devotions, he was forced by 
public opinion and social pressure to go 
to the mufti who ordered him to fast so 
many days or to give so much alms to 
make up for his omissions. 

After two years in the class of Hafiz 
Houssein I was advanced to the class of 
Hafiz Taiib Tahir where I remained two 
years more. In this class there were no 
girls, as their education was supposed to 
be completed when they had memorized 
some verses of the Koran. In the class 
of Hafiz Taiib we studied geography, 
history, arithmetic, and reading. In all 
there were about seventy boys. Of at 
least a thousand Turkish boys in Kemer, 
only this number received even the scant 
education of the Mekteb-I-Iptidiieh. 
This cannot be ascribed to the expense, as 
each boy has only to pay weekly one egg 
and a metalik (one cent) or its equivalent 
in wood, vegetables, or fruit. 


CHAPTER IV 


STORIES AND GAMES 

We Turks are great story-tellers. 
Our lives are leisurely ones and we pass 
much of our time in telling and listening 
to stories. Every district has its own 
legends, and then there are tales of a more 
national character. Being a simple 
people, our stories are seldom intricate. 
The characters are shepherds, farmers, 
hodj as, bandits, and merchants, and the 
incidents are drawn from every-day life. 
Almost every story has some simple philo¬ 
sophical content. 

A great many stories are told of Nas- 
reddin Hodja, who is presented as partly 
clown, partly rogue, and partly philos¬ 
opher. He is supposed to have some 
reality in history. It is said that he was 

the friend and adviser of the great Tartar 

60 


STORIES AND GAMES 61 

chief, Tamerlane, who overran Asia 
Minor in the fourteenth century. 

One day this Nasreddin Hodja bought 
a donkey. He decided he would teach 
the donkey to live without food. For ten 
days he did not feed it and as a result the 
poor beast died. A passing friend, see¬ 
ing the Hodja standing over the dead 
animal, inquired as to what had happened. 
The Hodja mournfully replied, “ I was 
trying to teach my donkey to get along 
without food and just when he had 
learned how, he died.” 

On another occasion he had gone into a 
field to steal some cabbages and was 
carrying on his back a sack full of them 
when the owner of the field arrived. 
“ Hodja, what are you doing here? ” in¬ 
quired the farmer. The Hodja answered: 
“ I was taking a walk when the wind blew 
and I grabbed hold of the cabbages so as 
not to be blown away. Unfortunately 
they all came out by the roots.” “ But 
how did they get into your bag? ” asked 


62 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

the owner. “ That is just what I myself 
was wondering,” was the reply. 

Another day Nasreddin Hodja bor¬ 
rowed a cauldron from his neighbors and 
after keeping it a while returned it with 
a saucepan inside. “ What is this? ” they 
asked. “ The cauldron had a baby while 
it was in my house,” answered the Hodja. 
A few days later he borrowed the caul¬ 
dron again but did not return it for some 
time. The neighbors went to him and 
asked for it. Nasreddin Hodja informed 
them that it was dead. “Dead!” they 
cried. “ How can a cauldron die? 
Hurry and give it back to us!” “Ah! 
Hypocrites!” said the Hodja. “You 
were willing enough to believe when I told 
you it had a baby, but must not that which 
brings forth also die? Your cauldron is 
dead, I tell you.” 

Once Nasreddin Hodja’s friends came 
to borrow his donkey. He told them that 
the donkey was not at home. Just then 
a loud braying was heard from the stable. 


STORIES AND GAMES 


63 


The friends said, “ Why did you deceive 
us, Hodja? The donkey is there.” 
“ By Allah! ” replied Nasreddin. “ What 
fools there are in the world. They will 
believe a donkey, when they will not be¬ 
lieve a hodja.” 

On still another occasion Nasreddin 
Hodja was eating cucumbers by the road¬ 
side. He peeled them very thickly. 
“ Let whoever passes this way afterwards 
think that it was a gentleman who ate 
cucumbers here,” he thought. When 
they were finished he collected the peels 
and scraped them thin. “ Let the passers- 
by imagine also that the gentleman has 
some servants,” he said. The scrapings 
being finished he collected the peels again 
and ate them up, saying to himself, “ Let 
them think he had a horse as well! ” and 
he went on his way well satisfied with the 
impression he had left behind him. 

We have many stories of the genii. 
Most Mohammedans believe that every¬ 
body has two genii, the good known as 


64 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


Melek (angel) which stands at their 
right side, and the bad known as Sheitan 
(satan) which stands at their left. In 
saying our prayers alone we end by turn¬ 
ing to the right and left and saying, 
“ Selamoun aleikoum ” (“ Peace and 

mercy upon you ”), just as if there were 
others praying with us, and we explain 
this by saying that our good and bad 
genii are on either side of us and a wise 
and holy man is respectful towards them. 
Both the good and the bad genii are sup¬ 
posed to be under the command of Allah 
who uses them as instruments in accom¬ 
plishing his will in this world. A very 
good example of how strong a grip this 
belief in genii has on the people of Turkey 
is given by an incident that happened in 
my father’s vineyard. 

In this vineyard there was a pear-tree 
that bore very poor fruit. The pears 
were small, hard, and sour. This tree had 
the reputation of being the tree of a bad 
genie who was responsible for most of the 


STORIES AND GAMES 


65 


sickness in the country. It was a com¬ 
mon thing for people who were ill to come 
to the tree and nail an onion to the trunk 
in the hope of pleasing the genie, who was 
reputed to be fond of onions and willing 
to withdraw his curse which was the cause 
of sickness from those who fed him his 
favorite vegetable. Sometimes there were 
as many as forty or fifty onions sticking 
in the trunk of this tree. One day while 
my father and I were visiting the vine¬ 
yard, a party of six men were camped 
about the tree. They had slaughtered a 
young kid and were eating the cooked 
meat. The head of the kid had been 
nailed to the tree as a sacrifice to the genie 
and in the hope that a member of the 
party would be cured from a long illness. 
My father joined the group and talking 
to the men endeavored to convince them 
that their belief in the genie was illogical. 
He stated that he was one of the 
“ Ulema,” but they remained unim¬ 
pressed. He then ordered me to chop 


66 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


down the tree. I obeyed him in spite of 
the angry protests of all the men. Seeing 
their comjdaints could not change my 
father’s determination to destroy the tree, 
they left, calling upon him the illness of 
their sick comrade and predicting both 
our deaths in a short time because we had 
destroyed the tree of the genie. 

A very famous story often told in the 
country about Kemer and in which the 
genii play an important part has to do 
with Mt. Ida, which is known in Turkish 
as Ivas Dahl or Goose Mountain. Ac¬ 
cording to this story, a band of thieves 
lived on the mountain-top. Their chief 
was Kara Mustafa who loved Melika the 
daughter of Taih Deda (Saint Taih), a 
very holy man. Taih refused to give his 
daughter to the bandit chief and the lat¬ 
ter attacked the village where they lived, 
but was unable to abduct Melika because 
the angels came and fought on her 
father’s side. An old woman of the 
village who hated Taih Deda then went 


STORIES AND GAMES 67 

to Kara Mustafa and informed him that 
Taih Deda had a great fear of fire. She 
suggested that the bandits attack the 
village at night under cover of a flock of 
goats to whose horns flaming torches 
should be attached. She offered to guide 
Mustafa directly to Melika after his en¬ 
trance into the village. 

The robbers accepted the old woman’s 
counsel and started down from the moun¬ 
tain-top one very dark night driving 
ahead of them the goats with their flaming 
torches. Taih Deda seeing them coming 
died of fright, but Melika courageously 
went out to meet them. She waved her 
hand back and forth and said, “ May 
Allah turn you to stone! ” Immediately 
the goats and robbers stood petrified be¬ 
fore her. Kneeling down, she offered 
thanks to Allah and asked him to turn her 
also to stone so that she could stand 
among the robbers and goats throughout 
the ages as a proof of Allah’s justice and 
power. At this moment a flock of geese 


68 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


flew among the petrified men and goats 
and brought them back to life. The 
geese were genii in disguise, and under the 
leadership of the genie of a girl who loved 
Kara Mustafa. Melika on arising from 
her prayer saw the men and goats running 
away. She again waved her hand and 
repeated, “ May Allah turn you to 
stone!” The robbers and goats had 
already escaped but the geese were petri¬ 
fied along with Melika. Allah had 
granted both her prayer and her request. 
To-day if you go to the summit of Kas 
Dahl you can see the stones which re¬ 
semble the geese, and among them one 
resembling a maiden. Every year all the 
girls of the villages make a pilgrimage to 
the mountain-top and pray for St. Melika 
who asked to be turned to stone so the 
world could know that Allah is just and 
powerful. 

Another very popular story in Kemer 
about the genii explains the origin of the 
pine-tree on the Media Mountains and 


STORIES AND GAMES 


69 


of the pine-nuts which we prize highly, 
using them in both pilaf and helva, our 
two most popular dishes. 

Once upon a time on top of the Modia 
Mountains there was a great battle be¬ 
tween all the good and all the bad genii. 
After a long and difficult struggle, the 
good genii were victorious, having suc¬ 
ceeded in killing all the bad. The ground 
was completely covered with the bodies of 
the bad genii. It was impossible to bury 
them and in the warm sunshine millions 
of tumble-bugs began to collect about the 
bodies. Thereupon the king of the good 
genii waved his hand and all the bodies 
of the bad genii changed into pine-trees 
and all the tumble-bugs into pine-nuts. 

We have many proverbs in Turkey, in 
fact as a people we are very fond of them, 

and I believe they are often more ex¬ 
pressive than their English equivalents. 
For example, you say, “ He killed two 
birds with one stone.” But we say, “ He 
cleaned the candlestick to butter the rice.” 


70 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TUB KEY 


A few other characteristic proverbs are 
“ How much the poor foot has to suffer 
from the foolish head,” and “ What do I 
care that the world is wide, if my own 
shoe is narrow.” 

Short humorous anecdotes are also ex¬ 
tremely popular with us. The following 
is a good sample of these. One day a 
camel was asked why his neck was 
crooked. He replied, “ I wonder what 
part of my body is straight.” 

Games for a Turkish boy really begin 
when he enters the Mekteb Rushdi 
(school of adolescence). This took place 
for me when I was nine years old and I 
remained there until I was twelve. The 
work in this school is more interesting 
than that of the Mekteb-I-Iptidiieh and 
there is more liberty for play. Here we 
studied geography, history, arithmetic, 
civics, reading, and writing. In addition 
we had daily one and one-half hours’ 
study in the Koran and one hour’s study 
of religious law. In the Mekteb Rushdi 


STORIES AND GAMES 


71 


there were some Greek boys, and they 
were excused during these periods. The 
Greeks had their own school, but some of 
the boys came to our school to learn 
Turkish. There were about sixty boys in 
the Mekteb Rushdi and we had two 
teachers. 

We played many of the games that the 
boys of America play such as Leap Frog, 
Blind Man’s Buff, Follow the Leader, 
Hot Hand, Prisoners’ Base, and Swat 
Tag. We call the latter game Kaddir 
(mule) and I think our form of it is more 
interesting than that common in America. 
We drive a stick in the ground and attach 
to it a rope about five yards long. The 
boy who is 44 it ” takes the end of this rope 
and the rest of the boys each have a 
44 swat,” consisting of a stocking, a towel, 
or an old cloth, which at the beginning of 
the game are placed around the stick. 
When the game begins each boy rushes in 
and grabs his 44 swat,” and endeavors to 
strike the boy holding the end of the rope 


72 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

with it. The latter tries to kick the swat¬ 
ting boys, and if he succeeds the boy he 
kicks becomes “ it ” and the game begins 
again. 

To an American boy used to baseball 
our most popular ball-game would seem 
tame. At the two ends of a court we 
place stones each guarded by two boys. 
A boy of one team strikes the ball towards 
the opposing team. The boy receiving 
the ball tries to hit the stone of the 
“ strikers ” from the place of recovery. 
When he succeeds in doing this, those on 
his team become the “ strikers.” 

Another game which was very popular 
with us was Ousum Eshek (long donkey). 
In this game about five boys play on a 
side. The captain of one team stands 
with his back to a wall and the other mem¬ 
bers of his team bend over, the first one 
putting his head against the captain’s 
stomach, the second against the rear of 
the first boy, the third against the rear of 
the second and so on. This team makes 


STORIES AND GAMES 


73 


up the long donkey. The opposing team 
are the riders. They all rush and jump 
on the back of the long donkey. The 
captain of the riders jumps near the head 
of the donkey which is represented by the 
captain of the donkey team. After all 
the riders are mounted their captain must 
count thirty before taking a breath. If 
he falls to the ground, or if any of the 
other riders do so, the donkey team and 
the riders change places. 

All these games were only for boys. 
Old folks did not take them seriously. 
However, this was not the case with the 
two great national sports of Turkey, 
wrestling and dancing. On all important 
festivals there were wrestling and dancing 
contests. When the son of a rich man 
was to marry, the father sent invitations 
throughout the whole country inviting all 
the wrestlers and dancers to come and 
compete for prizes. In this way he 
provided amusement for his guests. 

Our wrestlers use the catch-as-catch- 


74 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


can style of wrestling and cover their 
bodies with olive oil before thev enter the 
ring. Every Turkish boy is taught to 
wrestle, and if he is proficient in this sport 
he is extremely proud of it. We also 
have many interesting dances. Only the 
men dance in public. They are usually 
accompanied by music from a drum some¬ 
what resembling an Indian tom-tom. The 
steps are quite intricate, and when the 
dancers are dressed in their festival clothes 
of many colors they present a beautiful 
sight. 

Nearly every boy in Turkey has a fight¬ 
ing cock or drake. In the winter time we 
passed a great deal of our time in training 
them and in arranging and conducting 
matches. The matches are often quite 
humorous. One bird will appear to be 
practically defeated and the owner of its 
opponent already gloating over the pros¬ 
pect of certain victory when the appar¬ 
ently defeated bird, after being sub¬ 
merged in cold water (this is permitted 


STORIES AND GAMES 75 

by the rules of the game) will be revived 
to such an extent that it routs its rival in 
short order. 

Once each winter the government would 
conduct at Kemer a great camel-fighting 
tournament. The receipts from this event 
were used towards the purchasing of ships 
for the Turkish navy. About a mile out 
of town in a broad open field a great ring 
about one hundred yards in diameter was 
roped off. Into this were turned two 
male camels with their mouths strapped 
shut. This precaution was taken to pre¬ 
vent the camels from killing one another. 
A camel is an extremely valuable animal 
and if there were danger of the camels 
being killed but few camel owners would 
enter their animals in the contest. The 
camels would rush at each other with great 
force striking with their heads, feet and 
necks. The battle would last often for an 
hour and occasionally longer. Finally one 
camel would admit himself defeated by 
running away. The owner of the victori- 


76 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


oujs camel would then conduct it through 
the crowd of spectators who would bestow 
gifts of embroidered handkerchiefs, 
sweets, and money upon the owner. In a 
single day as many as ten contests would 
take place. Often the camel fights were 
varied by contests between two rams. 



A Caravan in Asia Minor. 




















































































• 






















. 













CHAPTER V 


FESTIVALS 

We have many festivals, and in describ¬ 
ing them to you, so as not to forget any, I 
will begin with New Year’s and tell of 
each succeeding festival as it comes in the 
calendar. The Moslem year differs 
greatly from that of the Western peo¬ 
ples. It has twelve lunar months and a 
total of only 354 days, being eleven days 
shorter than the solar year. As previously 
stated, our calendar dates from the 
Ilegira or flight of Mohammed from 
Mecca to Medina which took place in a. d. 
622 . In 1922, 1,300 solar years after the 
Hegira, our calendar reads 1340. Thus 
in 1,300 years we have gained forty years 
on the Western calendar or about one 
year in every thirty-three. It may interest 

you to know that a. d. 20,526 and A. H. 

77 


78 WHEN I A BOY IN TURKEY 


(After Hegira) 20,536 will be partly 
coincident. 

Regulating our calendar by the moon 
instead of the sun brings the same festival 
at all seasons. For example, our New 
Year’s does not come regularly in the win¬ 
ter like yours, that is if you live in the 
Northern Hemisphere, but in a period of 
thirty-three years it makes a cycle of the 
four seasons. This would work quite a 
hardship on manufacturers of New Year’s 
cards, as they would have continually to 
change their designs and verses. How¬ 
ever, as New Year’s cards are not known 
in Turkey, no one is inconvenienced. The 
names of the months in our calendar are 
in Arabic, and some have a seasonal mean¬ 
ing, as the beginning of spring, second 
spring, beginning of summer, second sum¬ 
mer, etc. These meanings refer to the 
first year of our calendar. To-day the 
month bearing the name “ beginning of 
summer ” may come in the middle of the 
winter. 


FESTIVALS 79 

New Year’s is known to us as Yil 
Basher (year head) and is not an impor¬ 
tant festival. The first really important 
festival is Yevmi Ashurer (day of sweet 
soup) which comes ten days later. On 
this day Noah is supposed to have left 
the ark and, more important for Moslems, 
it is the day that Houssein, the son of Ali 
and Mohammed’s grandson by his daugh¬ 
ter Fatima, was killed. On this day and 
succeeding days until the end of the sec¬ 
ond month of the year we are ordered to 
share Allah’s gifts with others, therefore 
every family makes ashurer (sweet soup) 
of sugar, barley, corn, and chick-peas and 
invites its neighbors to come and partake 
of it with them. Every person has a dif¬ 
ferent day assigned to him by custom. 
As our family were descendants of the 
original governor of the province, it was 
our customary privilege to offer ashurer 
on the first day. According to tradition, 
Houssein was killed in the desert and died 
in thirst, crying out for water. There- 


80 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


fore good Moslems do not drink much 
water during this month, and only drink 
from clay pots. Some devout old women 
hardly drink at all. In Persia and Arabia 
where the people are largely of a different 
sect of Mohammedans than we in Turkey 
(a sect known as the Shiahs, while we are 
known as Sunnees) the tenth day of 
Mouharem (the first month of the year) 
is a much more important festival. The 
men go about striking their bodies and 
crying, “Ah! Houssein! Ah! Houssein! ” 
over and over again. They also parade 
through the streets each wearing a white 
apron with blood flowing upon it from a 
self-inflicted cut in the forehead. 

During Seffer (the second month of the 
year) no one can marry, because it was in 
this month that Hassan, the elder brother 
of Houssein, was poisoned. 

On the twelfth day of Rabi-ul-Avel, the 
third month, is the birthday of Mo¬ 
hammed. The town-crier goes about in¬ 
forming the inhabitants that at two hours 


FESTIVALS 


81 


after midday prayers a rich citizen invites 
them all to the mosque. When everybody 
is assembled in the mosque, songs cele^ 
brating the birth of Mohammed are sung. 
These songs are over four hundred years 
old and were written by the famous Turk¬ 
ish poet, Souleiman Cheliby. After some 
singing, the hodja dressed in white brings 
forth on a small table a package of silk 
handkerchiefs. There are forty in all, and 
in the veiy center is a small glass vial sup¬ 
posedly containing a hair from Mo¬ 
hammed’s beard. As the hodja removes 
the handkerchiefs, the people sing. When 
the handkerchiefs are all removed and the 
vial finally exposed, each one comes for¬ 
ward, kisses the vial and touches his fore¬ 
head with it. After this ceremony is com¬ 
pleted, sweet sirups are offered to all at 
the expense of the wealthy man who is 
host for the day. The reason sirups are 
drunk is because, according to a tradition, 
Emina, the mother of Mohammed, was 
given sirups by an angel and immediately 


82 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

after she drank them Mohammed was 
born. At night the minarets of all the 
mosques are illuminated with many lamps. 
During the remainder of this month and 
the whole of the next the songs in the 
mosque are repeated daily and a different 
citizen acts as host every day, providing 
the necessary sweet sirups. Thus the peo¬ 
ple are entertained. 

On the fifteenth day of Djemer-zil- 
evel, the fifth month, is Lele-I-Ragaib 
(night of annunciation). It was on this 
night that an angel announced to Emina, 
the mother of Mohammed, that she was to 
give birth to a prophet of Allah. Special 
prayers are offered and the minarets are 
again illuminated. 

The next month, Djemer-zil-ahir, is the 
first of the three months of preparation 
for Ramazan, the holiest month of our 
year and corresponding somewhat to the 
Christian Lent. During this month and 
the two succeeding ones many women 
fast from sunrise to sunset on Thursdays 


FESTIVALS 


83 


and Fridays, because it may be impossible 
for them to fast during Ramazan. 

On the fifth day of Resheb, which is the 
seventh month, is the Lele-I-Mirach 
(night of ascension). It was on this night 
that Mohammed is supposed to have 
ascended into heaven and prayed before 
Allah, whose face was hidden by a cloud. 
It is recorded in the Koran that on this 
occasion Mohammed saw Jesus sitting at 
the right hand of Allah and Moses at the 
left. This night there are extra prayers 
and the minarets are again illuminated. 

The next month is Shaban and on the 
fifth day comes Lele-I-Beraet (night of 
forgiveness). On this night Allah is be¬ 
lieved to review the sins of all and to make 
the decision as to their fate during the 
coming year. Many people pray all night. 
The minarets are again illuminated. This 
is the last festival before Ramazan. 

On the last day of Shaban towards sun¬ 
set some inhabitants go off into the moun¬ 
tains to look for the moon. Others climb 


84 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


to the tops of trees or to the roofs of 
houses for the same purpose. The reason 
for this is that as soon as the moon is seen 
the month of Ramazan begins. As soon 
as any one sees the moon he hurries to the 
mufti and says, “ I am a good Moslem 
and I have seen the moon this night,” 
whereupon the mufti tells the muezzin 
who then calls from the minaret, “ To¬ 
morrow is Ramazan! To-morrow is 
Ramazan! ” The town criers go about 
the city repeating the same words. 
Drums are sounded and cannons are ex¬ 
ploded to tell the faithful that the holy 
month has begun. 

We have been ordered in the Koran to 
fast during the month of Ramazan from 
sunrise to sunset. This does not merely 
mean that we cannot take food while the 
sun is above the horizon but also that we 
cannot drink, smoke, or even smell of a 
flower. When Ramazan comes in winter 
it is not difficult to live up to Allah’s com¬ 
mand, as the days are short and cool. But 


FESTIVALS 


85 


during summer, especially if Ramazan 
comes just at the time of the harvest, much 
suffering is experienced. To work all day 
in the fields under a hot sun without food 
or water is enough to overcome the strong¬ 
est of men. I have known workmen of 
my father suffering from hunger and 
thirst, to throw their hot, perspiring bodies 
into a pool of water for relief from the 
tropical sun, but not allow a single drop 
of water to pass their lips. 

With the setting of the sun the fast 
turns into a feast. Every house has its 
visitors. Great meals are prepared. 
Everybody eats more than is good for 
him. There are many special Ramazan 
dishes, and it is during this month that a 
Turkish housewife is called upon to dem¬ 
onstrate her skill as a cook. 

The eating is accompanied by music and 
dancing and what for me was always more 
enjoyable, a Kara-geuz show. This re¬ 
sembles somewhat your Punch and Judy, 
but instead of dolls we have cardboard 


86 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


figures which throw their shadows on a 
white screen behind which is a brilliant 
light. Kara-geuz is our national buffoon 
and the leading character in these shadow 
plays. Many are the hours of laughter 
he has given me. The story of the origin 
of the Kara-geuz show is quite interest¬ 
ing. According to this story there was a 
Pasha (this is a title given by the Sultan 
to men of power and influence) who 
was building a palace. Among his work¬ 
men there was one who, no matter what 
he did or said, made every one laugh. As 
he had large black eyes he was called 
Kara-geuz (black eye). His antics kept 
the other workmen in such a continual up¬ 
roar of laughter that no progress was 
made in the construction of the palace. 
The Pasha therefore dismissed Kara-geuz 
so that the work could go ahead. How¬ 
ever, Kara-geuz did not leave the place. 
He simply stopped work and sat about 
doing nothing. His mere presence again 
set the workers to laughing incessantly. 


FESTIVALS 


87 


The Pasha fearing that the palace would 
never be finished ordered Kara-geuz killed 
so as to put him permanently out of the 
way. His orders were immediately put 
into effect and Kara-geuz was beheaded. 
Immediately a great sadness came over 
all the workmen as well as the Pasha him¬ 
self. All the joy had apparently gone out 
of life. No one showed any interest in 
his work. They missed the laughter that 
Kara-geuz had caused. Therefore the 
Pasha in order to revive the spirits of 
both himself and his workmen ordered 
that the shadow of Kara-geuz should be 
immortalized. Thus began the Kara- 
geuz show, and to-day the shadow of 

Kara-geuz brings laughter regularly to all 

* 

the inhabitants of the Near East. 

The evening’s entertainment usually 
comes to an end towards midnight, when 
everybody steals a few hours of sleep. In 
the early hours of the morning it begins 
again. However, with the coming of 
dawn the revelry stops entirely. The 


88 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

drums and cannons are sounded and 
everybody prepares himself for the first 
prayer of the day. 

On the twenty-seventh of Ramazan is 
the Lele-I-Kadir (night of power). This 
is the most important religious date in the 
Moslem year. On this night Moslems be^ 
lieve that Allah sent down the Koran to 
the lowest of the seven heavens from where 
it was given to Mohammed in revelations 
as he needed it, that Moses received the 
ten commandments from Allah, that 
Christ rose from the dead, and that Allah 
finished the creation of the world and 
made Adam and Eve. The mosques are 
crowded as on no other occasion in the 
entire year. The prayers continue late 
into the night and the feasting this night 
is broken by no sleep but continues un¬ 
interrupted right up till the moment when 
the sun shows its edge on the horizon. 

Ramazan ended, the first three days of 
Sheval, the succeeding month, are given 
over to general merry-making. This pe- 


FESTIVALS 


89 


riod is known as Sheker (sugar) Bairam, 
or as Ramazan Bairam to distinguish it 
from Kourban (sacrifice) Bairam, of 
which we will speak a little later. These 
two festivals are the great merry-making 
occasions in our life. During Sheker 
Bairam visits are made from one village 
to another. There is a great deal of danc¬ 
ing and wrestling and all present their 
friends with candy and sweets. It is at 
this time that children receive gifts from 
their parents and relatives. As a chil¬ 
dren’s festival, Sheker Bairam is the most 
similar to Christmas of any festival in the 
Moslem year. 

I remember a very dramatic romance 
which developed in a village near Kemer 
as a result of a visit made there by some 
young men during Sheker Bairam. 
These young men left Kemer one evening 
with their musical instruments to sing and 
dance in a near-by village. During the 
festivities one of them discovered that a 
young lady was steadily looking at him. 


90 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


Her veil hid her entire face except her 
eyes, but these were very beautiful and 
seemed to regard him lovingly. The next 
day the young man managed to meet this 
young lady as she was going to the village 
spring for water. He spoke to her and 
asked her to remove her veil. Being quite 
sure that no one was about she did so for 
an instant. That instant was sufficient for 
the young man to fall passionately in love 
with her. On returning to Kemer he 
asked his father to visit the girl’s parents 
and to request their daughter as a wife 
for his son. His father did so, but learned 
that the girl was already promised to a 
young man of her own village. This 
young man was then approached and 
asked to give up his claim on the girl. He 
refused to do so. Whereupon the Kemer 
young man gathered his friends about him, 
armed them, and together they rode one 
evening, mounted on fast horses, to the 
village. They entered the beloved one’s 
house by force and carried her away. In 


FESTIVALS 


91 


leaving the village there was a slight skir¬ 
mish in which the young lady’s fiance was 
wounded. I recall hearing the band sing¬ 
ing on their return as they passed through 
the arch formed by our house and which 
spanned the road entering Kemer. The 
next day our father told us the whole 
story. The young lady was hidden with 
relatives of her lover until preparations 
for the marriage could be made. Her 
fiance was warned that it would be dan¬ 
gerous for him to try to recover her. He 
made no effort to do so, and the aggres¬ 
sive lover from Kemer married his heart’s 
choice about a month later. 

There are many humorous stories of 
Ramazan. The combining of the humor¬ 
ous with the religious may seem in bad 
taste from a Westerner’s viewpoint, but 
we regard it as quite natural. The fol¬ 
lowing is a story that is often told. On a 
hot day in Ramazan a Moslem was going 
on foot from one village to another. He 
was accompanied by a Jew and a Chris- 


92 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

tian. The Moslem was fasting, as his re¬ 
ligion required. The Jew and Christian 
were also fasting, but for the more worldly 
reason that they had no food. Towards 
evening they came to a small cabin where 
they were received by an old man. He 
said, “ You may remain here for the night. 
I have a well with good water, a little 
bread and a few olives, and some baclava 
(a Turkish sweet).” The travellers 
thanked him for his hospitality and sat 

down to eat. Thev first ate the bread 

•/ 

and olives and were about to eat the ba¬ 
clava when the Moslem said, “ Let us keep 
the baclava till morning and then who¬ 
ever has had the best dream during the 
night will eat it all.” The Jew and Chris¬ 
tian agreed and all three went to sleep. 
The following morning they proceeded to 
tell each other their dreams. The Chris¬ 
tian said, “ I dreamt that I met Jesus 
Christ and that he showed me through 
Paradise.” The Jew said, “ I dreamt 
that I met Moses who brought me before 


FESTIVALS 


93 


Jehovah.” The Moslem said, “ I dreamt 
that I met Mohammed who whispered in 
my ear, 4 There is a plate of baclava on 
the table. Don’t be a fool! Get up and 
eat it! ’ Now, gentlemen, you couldn’t 
expect me to disobey my prophet, so I 
rose and ate the baclava.” 

There is another good story which il¬ 
lustrates this custom of occasional^ re¬ 
ferring to religious things in a humorous 
manner. There are supposedly one hun¬ 
dred names that Mohammed applied to 
Allah. Of these he told ninety-nine to 
his followers, hut guarded the hundredth 
as a great secret. This hundredth name 
is believed to be a magical one which if 
discovered will enable its discoverer to 
realize his greatest desires. Many Mos¬ 
lems have strings of ninety-nine small 
beads and one big one. As they recite the 
known names of Allah they count off the 
small beads. The big bead represents the 
unknown name, and when they come to 
that they usually, after a moment’s 


94 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


thought, recite the creed and begin the 
exercise all over again. Apropos of this 
belief and custom they tell this story. 

Men had wondered for many years why 
the camel is so proud and holds his neck 
so high. They were unable to discover 
the reason till one day a hadji decided to 
ask the camel itself. To the hadji’s ques¬ 
tion the camel replied, “ Allah has ninety - 
nine names that all good Moslems know, 
but Mohammed guarded jealously the 
hundredth name of Allah. Of all the men 
and beasts in this world he has divulged 
this name to but one, and that is I. I know 
Allah’s hundredth name. Do you still 
wonder why I hold my head so high? ” 

Shortly after Sheker Bairam, the Delil 
would come to our town. He is a repre¬ 
sentative of the Koraiish tribe of Arabia 
which governs Mecca and to which Mo¬ 
hammed belonged. His duty is to enlist 
Moslems for the pilgrimage. Our Delil 
was an old man and a Sheik. His name 
was Mohammed Salih Brindji. On his 


FESTIVALS 


95 


arrival all the people of the town would 
turn out to bid him welcome. He was 
highly respected, as he was a member of 
the same tribe as the Prophet. All the 
rich men vied with one another in enter¬ 
taining him and he would stay a few days 
at each of their houses. 

The beginning of Zilkadeh, the eleventh 
month, the pilgrims would leave for 
Mecca. On the day of their departure 
they would gather together at the mosque. 
There were usually about twenty from 
Kemer and the surrounding villages. 
They were all men, with occasionally an 
old woman among them. Young women 
are not allowed to take the pilgrimage. 
All the town and countryside was out to 
see them off. In the courtyard of the 
mosque a great feast was prepared and 
everybody ate to their heart’s content. 
Afterwards there was special prayer for 
the pilgrims in which Allah was asked to 
watch over them in their long and perilous 
voyage. As they left the town on 


96 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


donkeys, in carts, or on foot for Smyrna 
and the sea, they were accompanied the 
first part of the way by the singing popu¬ 
lace. 

On the tenth day of the next month, 
Zilhidcha, the final month of the year, is 
Kourban (sacrifice) Bairam. It is on 
this day that Abraham prepared to sac¬ 
rifice his son Ismail to Allah. This is ac¬ 
cording to the Koran. The Old Testa¬ 
ment gives the name of his son as Isaac. 
In honor of this event every Moslem fam¬ 
ily kills a lamb and on the following four 
days there is music, dancing, and general 
merry-making. All visitors are asked to 
partake of the sacrificial animal. It is 
also on this day that the pilgrims must be 
in the Valley of Arafat outside of Mecca 
in order to qualify for the title of hadji. 

This ends the festivals except for that 
on the occasion of the return of the pil¬ 
grims, which is liable to take place at any 
time during the next two months. It is 
seldom that they return in numbers the 


FESTIVALS 


97 


same as they left. Usually some succumb 
to the rigors of the voyage or to epidemics 
that break out continually in the pilgrim 
camps. Their return is celebrated by 
practically the same ceremony as their go¬ 
ing. There are prayers of thanks, songs 
and feasting. Many are the objects which 
the pilgrims bring back with them, per¬ 
fume, holy soil from the Valley of Arafat, 
books of songs, strings of holy beads, bot¬ 
tles of Zem-zem water, and the kefin or 
pilgrim’s dress in which they are buried 
when they die. The Zem-zem water 
comes from the spring, which tradition 

savs is the one Allah caused to come forth 
•/ 

when Hagar, wife of Abraham, was wan¬ 
dering in the desert with her son Ismail. 
This water is believed to have great pow¬ 
ers in the curing of disease and the re¬ 
turned pilgrims jealously guard it, sip¬ 
ping of it on rare occasions. 


CHAPTER VI 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 

The character and mode of life of any 
people are largely determined by the work 
they do to earn a living. The great ma¬ 
jority of the people of Asia Minor are 
agricultural workers, tilling the soil and 
tending their flocks in much the same way 
as their ancestors have been doing for 
thousands of years. As a result, their 
ideas, their customs and their habits bear 
the mark of the soil. They live close to 
the earth which they love and which re- 
pays them well for their labors. Govern¬ 
ments come and go, one conqueror fol¬ 
lows another, even religions have their 
vogue, rising and falling in power and 
influence with the changing centuries. 
But at the base of our society is the 

farmer, essentially the same throughout 

98 




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GO 









AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 99 


the ages, planting his crops with the com¬ 
ing of spring and harvesting them each in 
its turn in summer and fall. Drought, in¬ 
sect pests, and pillaging soldiers, he bears 
them all with equal fortitude. He knows 
they are but temporary while the life-giv¬ 
ing soil is of all time. Therefore our peo¬ 
ple are simple, courageous, patient, credu¬ 
lous, kind-hearted, and generous, as you 
would expect people living close to mother 
earth to be. Unfortunately the simple¬ 
ness and credulity of our people are not 
without their disadvantages. As I will 
show you in the last chapter, they have 
often made our people the tools of selfish 
and unscrupulous leaders who played 
upon their passions and stirred them to 
deeds of cruelty and horror. 

The principal agricultural products of 
western Asia Minor are barley, wheat, ses¬ 
ame, raisins, olives, figs, tobacco, and all 
sorts of vegetables. All these were raised 
on my father’s property, and there was 
nothing I enjoyed more than riding about 



100 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


with him on his tours of inspection, which 
were especially frequent during the plant¬ 
ing and harvesting seasons. Not far from 
our garden was the stable where my father 
kept three fine horses, one for himself, an¬ 
other for my brother, and the third for me. 
My horse’s name was “ Kaplan,” which 
means “ tiger.” Many are the races that I 
have won with him. When but a very lit¬ 
tle boy I was already an expert rider. My 
father was even prouder of my skill as a 
rider than I was myself, as he had been 
my teacher. It was on 44 Kaplan ” that 
I accompanied him about the farm. 

To a Western boy, used to seeing all 
farming operations performed by modern 
machinery, our methods would seem very 
strange. They are indeed primitive, for 
in Asia Minor Ave still use the agricultural 
methods of Biblical times. We ploAv with 
oxen and use a wooden plow. We both 
sow and harvest our grain by hand. Much 
of the work is done by Avomen. At har¬ 
vest-time great numbers of families come 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 101 


from the interior with their black goat- 
hair tents and camp in the open, every 
one from grandfather and grandmother 
to granddaughter and grandson working 
in the fields. Many of the men have two, 
three, or four wives (by Mohammedan 
law a man is allowed a maximum of four 
wives), all of whom work in the fields. 

It is interesting to note that among the 
better classes of Moslems there are few 
men with more than one wife. This is 
largely due to the fact that the women 
of the better class do not work, and only 
a very rich man can afford to have more 
than a single wife. With the poor agri¬ 
cultural worker it is different. His wives 
must work, therefore instead of being a 
financial burden they are a financial as¬ 
set. From the viewpoint of Western civi¬ 
lization, this attitude towards women will 
seem strange and perhaps cruel. It is due 
to a certain extent to our religion, for in 
Mohammedanism women do not hold the 
same value in the eyes of Allah as men. 


102 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TUBKEY 


However, although the Christian coun¬ 
tries of the West do not permit polygamy 
they allow their women to work long hours 
in unhealthy factories, and even in some 
of the most advanced countries they do 
not have all the political, property, and 
legal rights that men do. I am happy to 
say that in Turkey the position of women 
is improving. Since the Revolution of 
1908 great advances have been made and 
still greater ones lie in the near future. 

The camp of the itinerant agricultural 
workers is especially interesting to visit 
in the evening, at the end of the day’s 
work. Then the women are cooking the 
simple meal of boiled vegetables in small 
earthen dishes. The men lie about on 
their home-made rugs smoking and chat¬ 
ting. A few sing plaintive love songs ac¬ 
companying themselves on the saz or 
zurna, native stringed instruments resem¬ 
bling a mandolin. The donkeys, on the 
backs of which the tents and baggage are 
carried, stroll about, nosing here, there, 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 103 


and everywhere, and no one pays any at¬ 
tention to them. An occasional goat or 
sheep sits down alongside of its owner, 
while the big, fierce dogs prowl about with 
a hungry look in their eyes. The children, 
almost naked, wrestle with one another or 
run races. Altogether, it is a colorful and 
happy scene. 

Most of my father’s land was rented to 
a Circassian named Ramazana who un¬ 
dertook the responsibility of cultivating it 
and paid as rent one-half of the crop. 
The vegetable gardens were rented to a 
Greek called Yanni, who supplied our 
family with vegetables and paid a small 
sum in money. 

I want to say just a few words about 
the various agricultural products. Turk¬ 
ish tobacco is famous the world over, and 
it is especially prized in America where 
the greatest quantities are consumed. Its 
cultivation is quite profitable. The plants 
grow to a height of about two to three 
feet and each plant bears about two dozen 


104 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


leaves. These are not all picked at once, 
but the women go over the fields picking 
only those leaves on each plant that have 
reached full growth. After numerous 
pickings, only the stem remains with the 
ripened blossom at the top. The leaves 
when picked are hung with strings on long 
sticks which are set on racks out in the 
sun so the tobacco can cure. When 
thoroughly cured it is packed in bales and 
shipped by camel and boat to Smyrna, 
where it is graded in great warehouses be¬ 
fore being sent out to all parts of the 
world. The grading is mostly done by 
women, and it is unhealthy, tedious, and 
ill-paid work. 

Most of our grapes are of the “ Sul¬ 
tana ” variety and are dried and sold as 
raisins. When picked they are spread out 
on the ground to dry in the sun. The 
ground has been especially prepared by 
cleaning away all the sod and wetting the 
soil with a mixture of water and earners 
manure, which acts as a paste, hardening 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 105 


the soil and thus preventing the wind from 
stirring up dust. When the grapes are 
sufficiently dried, the chaff is removed 
from them by allowing them to fall from 
a height of ten or twelve feet to the 
ground, the wind blowing the lighter chaff 
to the side. They are then packed in bags 
and shipped to Smyrna where there are 
large warehouses. Here the raisins are 
put in boxes by men in bare feet who 
stamp upon them so that the boxes will be 
well filled. 

Olives are the most important product 
of our section of Asia Minor. They are 
sold on the tree and harvested in Novem¬ 
ber. The buyers are experts, and know 
just by looking at the tree how many 
pounds of olives will be gotten from it. 
The men strike the trees with sticks, 
knocking the olives to the ground and they 
are then picked up by the women. They 
are sent in carts or on the backs of donkeys 
to the various presses in Kemer where the 
oil is pressed out of them. We have seven 


106 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


presses in Kemer. When I was a boy they 
were all operated by a horse on a tread¬ 
mill, but now steam-engines are used. 

On the last day of the olive harvest there 
is a festival. The owner of the grove pre¬ 
pares at his expense a great feast. When 
all the olives have been gathered except 
those of one tree, the owner takes a long 
pole and knocks the olives off this tree. 
I remember very well my grandfather 
Mohammed Kadir doing this. The own¬ 
er’s family pick up the olives while the 
workers look on. When the olives are all 
gathered the workers tie the owner to the 
tree and his family give them money to 
free him. Then the familv serves the 
workers with food, after which prayer is 
offered, and finally all eat together seated 
under the tree. 

I imagine that the way we thresh our 
grain would seem especially queer and an¬ 
tiquated to a Western boy. We spread 
the grain out on a piece of ground from 
which all vegetation and loose dirt have 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 107 

been removed and the sub-soil hardened 
by adding water, which is quickly dried up 
by the hot sun. We then drive over the 
grain in a sledge pulled by oxen or horses. 
In the bottom of the sledge are driven 
hundreds of little pieces of flint. These 
pulverize the straw, which is later thrown 
up with a wooden shovel against the wind. 
The grain being heavy falls directly to the 
ground while the lighter chaff is driven a 
little farther on. This process is repeated 
many times until all the grain has been 
separated from the chaff. The chaff is 
then put aside to feed to the stock, and the 
wheat is washed, the stones and dirt being 
picked out by hand. When I was small 
I enjoyed immensely riding on the sledge 
as it went round and round. In fact the 
little Turkish boys look forward to the 
threshing season as their Western broth¬ 
ers do to a visit to the amusement park 
and a ride on the merry-go-round. 

No picture of Turkish agricultural life 
would be complete without some mention 


108 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

of the shepherds and their flocks of sheep 
and goats which roam over our mountain¬ 
sides. Most of the mountain land belongs 
to the government and any one can graze 
his flocks on it if he pays yearly ten pias¬ 
ters (fifty cents) a head. 

During the summer the flocks go away 
up into the mountains, and as the weather 
grows colder they gradually descend into 
the valleys. The shepherds live with their 
families in huts made of branches of trees. 
They have numerous huts of this type 
scattered over the mountainsides, and as 
they move their flocks from one place to 
another they also move their families from 
one hut to another. Their belongings con¬ 
sist of but a few rugs and cooking utensils, 
so moving is not a difficult operation. The 
shepherds are big and powerful men and 
capable of standing tremendous hardships. 
They make wonderful soldiers, and it is 
they who have given the Turkish soldier 
his reputation for courage, strength, and 
the ability to endure the extreme thirst, 



Sledge Used for Threshing. 

Notice the great number of pieces of Hint driven into the bottom. 



The Turkish “ Mebry-Go-Kocnd ” in Asia Minor. 
The first step in threshing. 




AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 109 


hunger, and fatigue which they have been 
often made to suffer by the incompetence 
and corruption of their officers. 

From the milk of the sheep and goats 
a great deal of cheese is made. The most 
common type of cheese in our country is 
made in the following manner. A goat¬ 
skin is sewed into a sack with the hair on 
the inside. Into this sack which is hung 
on the branch of a tree, the milk from 
the flock is poured each day. Here it fer¬ 
ments, forming a hard white cheese which 
is very tasty. Many of these skins filled 
with cheese are sent to town each year, 
where they are sold, and with the money 
they bring the shepherds buy the things 
necessary to supply their simple needs. 

At this point I must say a few words 
about bandits, because it is with the shep¬ 
herds that they are most closely identified. 
The shepherds largely support them by 
giving them both food and money. Ban¬ 
dits have apparently always been a regu¬ 
lar part of our population. They play a 


110 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


leading part in all the stories that are 
handed down from one generation to an¬ 
other and are often the heroes of these 
stories. This is probably due to the fact 
that our government has usually been cor¬ 
rupt and oppressive, and the people’s sym¬ 
pathy has naturally gone out to the out¬ 
law who fought the authorities. Almost 
all the bandits that I knew of personally 
were men who had gotten into difficulties 
with the police, and in order to avoid go¬ 
ing to prison had fled to the mountains. 
Here they gathered together, forming 
bands under the leadership of the strong¬ 
est. The shepherds will not tell the police 
anything about them, sometimes because 
they are in sympathy with the bandits but 
more often because they know that they 
and members of their families may be 
killed if they do so. Although many of 
the bandits are not bad men at heart, hav¬ 
ing been forced into their profession by 
unfortunate circumstances, a goodly num¬ 
ber are really cruel and desperate char- 


AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 111 


acters who do not even possess that sense 
of honor that is proverbial among thieves. 
For financial reward they will betray their 
comrades to the police or will hire them¬ 
selves out to the authorities, or any one 
who will pay them well, for the most 
terrible purposes. In recent years the 
government has made regular use of them 
in terrorizing and massacring the Greeks 
and Armenians. In this way the govern¬ 
ment could disclaim all responsibilities for 
the atrocities committed. Unfortunately 
this sort of thing exists throughout the 
whole Near East. The Bulgarians use 
these tactics against the Greeks and 
Turks, and the Greeks against the Bul¬ 
garian and Turks, etc., etc. In the last 
chapter I shall try to explain the real 
causes of these conditions. However, you 
must not think that it is only in the Near 
East that these unholy alliances between 
government officials and criminals exist. 

Being an agricultural people and mak¬ 
ing use of but little machinery, the in- 


112 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TTJBKEY 


dustiy of our country is not very vast or 
complicated. The simple tools that our 
farmers need are made in small shops in 
the town. Here is also made the simple 
furniture and clothing that the people re¬ 
quire. In Ivemer there are innumerable 
shops each employing one or two men, 
rarely more. Each shop manufactures at 
the most one or two articles, using the 
methods of their ancestors. If you 
strolled through one of these streets you 
would see cobblers, tinsmiths, blacksmiths, 
wagon-makers, tailors, cabinet-makers, 
rug-weavers, upholsterers, soap-makers, 
and potters all at their tasks, the fronts of 
their shops wide open so that at one glance 
you can see the entire process of manu¬ 
facture going on. The wood-worker turns 
his lathe by foot-power as does the potter 
his wheel. Innumerable boys of all sizes 
and ages run about performing all the 
menial tasks. By diligence and hard work 
they may some day have a shop of their 
own, if before they grow up great fac- 



A Rug Factory. 
Asia Minor. 










AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 113 

tories do not invade our land, in which 
case they will no doubt tend some great 
machine, performing the same monoto¬ 
nous operation over and over again to the 
profit of some owner of stock in the fac¬ 
tory who lives luxuriously in a far-off 
land, knowing nothing and caring as little 
of the human soul whose toil supports 
him. 


CHAPTER VII 


CEREMONIES 

The ceremonies that mark the great 
epochs in a man’s life differ greatly in 
the various countries, but usually have 
some points of resemblance. In this chap¬ 
ter I shall try to picture for you the cere¬ 
monies in Turkey that accompany such 
milestones in our lives as birth, marriage, 
and death. 

There is no ceremony actually con¬ 
nected with the birth of a child, but that 
associated with the naming of a baby takes 
place shortly after. It is a very simple 
ceremony. About a week after the baby 
is bom the hodja is invited to the house. 
He is feasted and usually does not allow 
this occasion to eat heartily slip by. After 
having eaten to his satisfaction, he takes 
the baby into his lap and recites into its 


CEREMONIES 


115 


ear the Moslem creed followed by “ Your 
name is Ahmed,” or whatever the parents 
have chosen to call their baby. This is re¬ 
peated three times and the ceremony is 
ended. 

I think I can best describe to you the 
marriage ceremony and the formalities of 
courtship by telling you of the courtship 
and marriage of my cousin Zia Bey. 

Zia Bey was the son of Houssein Bey, a 
rich landowner, and of my father’s sister 
Zakia. His marriage took place in 1910 
which was after the Revolution and when 
women of the higher classes often went 
unveiled. He married Sedika Hanoum, 
the daughter of Mustafa Bey who was the 
Takrihat Mudiri (directing secretary) of 
the Kaza (province) of Aivali, a town 
about thirty-five kilometers south of 
Kemer on the .ZEgean Sea. Sedika 
Hanoum had a married sister in Kemer 
and it was while she was visiting her sister 
that Zia Bey met and fell in love with her. 
The parents of both were old friends. 


116 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


Zia requested his father to arrange for the 
marriage. His parents thereupon went 
to Aivali to see Sedika’s parents. My 
mother and I accompanied them. 

We stayed at Aivali four days during 
which time there was much visiting and 
entertaining. Before we left the formal 
request for the hand of Sedika was made. 
Zia’s father said to Sedika’s father, “ We 
want your girl for our son according to 
the command of Allah and as Mohammed 
did.” The answer was, “ Yes! We give 
our daughter to your son.” This formal¬ 
ity was also gone through between the two 
mothers. 

Shortly after our visit to Aivali, Sedika 
came to Kemer and staved with her sister. 
A week before the marriage she sent sugar 
cakes to all her friends and Zia did like¬ 
wise. Four old women were hired to go 
about the city and announce the coming 
marriage. A crier in the mosque court¬ 
yard and another in the market-place also 
spread the good news. The marriage fes- 


CEREMONIES 


117 


tivities began on a Friday and lasted for 
a week. The men were entertained in the 
garden and the women in the house. 
Every day ten sheep were killed and food 
was served to all those that called. 
Friends of Zia sent gifts of sheep, chick¬ 
ens, rice, fruit, flour, sugar, and the other 
essential foods for a great feast. The 
guests from out of town were lodged with 
friends of both the bridegroom’s and 
bride’s families. All during these early 
festivities the bride remained at her sister’s 
house receiving her woman and girl 
friends while Zia aided his father and 
mother as host at their home. In addition 
to the eating there was much drinking. 
Although the Koran prohibits the drink¬ 
ing of alcohol, on this occasion the prohibi¬ 
tion was not heeded, and great quantities 
of liquor were drunk. Every evening 
there was singing, dancing, a Kara-geuz 
show, and wrestling. Prizes of sheep 
were offered to the winners of the wres¬ 
tling contests. On the Thursday, a week 


118 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


after the beginning of the festivities, a 
hodja and two old men representing the 
bride came to Zia. The hodja asked, “ Do 
you agree to marry Sedika? ” Zia. re¬ 
plied, “ Yes! ” This question was asked 
three times and each time the same reply 
was given. Then the hodja with two old 
men representing Zia went to Sedika and 
the same formalities were gone through. 
This constituted the entire legal ceremony. 

In the afternoon of this same day a long 
procession of carriages made their way to 
the home of Sedika’s sister. The first of 
these carriages was lined with silk, and in 
it rode Sedika’s mother and sister-in-law. 
In the other carriages rode women friends 
of both the bridegroom’s and bride’s 
families. On arriving at the house where 
the bride was staying they all entered to 
witness the ceremony of dressing the bride 
in her wedding gown. The gown was of 
pure white silk with a red silk veil. When 
the bride was completely dressed she was 
escorted to the silk-lined carriage and the 


CEREMONIES 


119 


procession made its way to Zia’s home. It 
is the custom for the bride to weep during 
this journey. On arriving, Sedika was 
escorted to the bridal chamber where she 
remained with a married friend until two 
hours after sunset when she was left alone. 

On this same Thursday afternoon Zia 
stayed at a friend’s house. He bathed and 
dressed himself carefully. At two hours 
after sunset his friend escorted him to the 
mosque. After regular prayers, the im- 
mam offered a special prayer for the suc¬ 
cess and happiness of Zia’s marriage. 
This prayer ended, Zia made his way 
home. He was preceded by the immam 
and the town’s best singers, who sang re¬ 
ligious songs, and was followed by a crowd 
of friends and onlookers. Many of those 
in the procession carried torches of red 
and green fire and some discharged nu¬ 
merous varieties of fireworks. 

On arriving at the garden gate, the 
hodja entered first, followed by Zia and 
his friends. Just inside the gate there was 


120 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


a great bowl of sweet sirup and a few old 
cups. All helped themselves to a drink. 
New cups are not used as it is the custom 
for the guests to steal the cups and break 
them for good luck. When all had drunk, 
Zia turned to his father and kissed his 
hand. Then the hodja and all Zia’s rela¬ 
tives came forward and he kissed each of 
their hands in turn. This ceremony 
ended, he rushed into the house, every one 
in reach striking him strongly on the back. 
ITe went directly to his wife who was 
awaiting him in the bridal chamber. As 
he entered she rose and kissed his hand. 
He then threw back her veil. Together 
they prayed, the bride standing at the left 
and to the rear of her husband. After¬ 
wards they ate a little of the numerous 
sweets which had been especially prepared 
for them by their various friends. The 
people in the garden shouted, “You are 
eating many good things. We desire to 
have some! ” Zia then sent down to them 
some of the sweets, and while he and his 


CEREMONIES 


121 


bride remained alone together the guests 
continued their revelry until the follow¬ 
ing morning. 

When I was eight years old my grand¬ 
father Mohammed Kadir died. Before 
his death the hodja. came and recited the 
Moslem creed over and over again while 
sitting next to the dying man and gave 
him Zem-zem water to drink. Mohammed 
Kadir like most Moslems died bravely. 
When all his sons and daughters were 
gathered about him, he gave them his 
blessing. He said, “ My children, you 
must obey Allah’s commandments as Mo¬ 
hammed instructed you to do, and you 
must walk in the true way as my genera¬ 
tion has done.” 

As my grandfather was a dervish, there 
came at news of his death many dervishes 
of the same order from Adramyti. They 
and the immam washed the body and 
wrapped it in a sheet. The body was then 
put in a wooden coffin and on the same 
day carried to the cemetery. The funeral 


122 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


procession was led by the dervishes who 
sang and shouted the creed as they 
marched along. Following them came the 
coffin which was carried on the shoulders 
of four friends of the deceased, and be¬ 
hind the coffin marched all the men of 
Ivemer. (The women are not permitted 
to come to the cemetery for a burial.) 

At the bottom of the grave there was a 
wooden plank. The body was removed 
from the coffin and set in the grave on top 
of this plank. When the grave was cov¬ 
ered up, the immam read some special 
verses from the Koran, after which every¬ 
body but himself went away. He stood 
at the head of the grave and said, “ Mo¬ 
hammed Ivadir, say that Allah is One and 
that there is no other god before Him.” 
He then repeated the creed three times. 
The reason for this is that Moslems be¬ 
lieve that immediately after burial two 
angels descend from heaven and ask the 
body as to its religion, and as the body 
may be afraid to reply the immam remains 


CEREMONIES 


123 


behind to aid it in giving the correct an¬ 
swer. During this ceremony at the ceme¬ 
tery, the women remained at home repeat¬ 
ing the chapter of the Koran known as 
“ Yassin.” Three, seven, and forty days 
after the burial our family prepared pilaf 
in honor of the dead and friends came in 
and partook of it. As they ate they said, 
“ God give rest to the soul of Mohammed 
Kadir.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 

When I was twelve years old I finished 
the Mekteb Rushdi, and as there was no 
school of a higher grade in Ivemer, my 
father sent me to Brussa to continue my 
education. Brussa is a city of a quarter 
of a million population about one hundred 
and thirty miles northeast of Ivemer and 
not far from the Sea of Marmora. It is 
a very beautiful city, being situated at the 
foot of the Olympus Mountains, the high¬ 
est mountains in Asia Minor and snow¬ 
capped the entire year. 

Brussa was the first capital of the Otto¬ 
man Empire and here are buried the first 
six sultans. To me, a little boy from 
Kemer, it seemed a wonderful city. The 
famous Green Mosque, built by Sultan 

Mohammed Cheliby, the fifth sultan, was 

124 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 125 


more splendid than I had imagined any¬ 
thing could be. Then, too, Djami Kebir 
(big mosque) built by Sultan Yildirim 
Byazid, the fourth sultan, awed me with 
its grandeur and beauty. Altogether the 
city had three hundred mosques. On 
every corner there were fountains and 
baths, for the ever-melting snows of the 
adjoining mountains provided the city 
with an abundant supply of cool, clear 
water. 

The school that I attended was known 
as the Mekteb Sultanie (sultan’s school) 
and the course lasted six years. Here we 
studied history, civics, geography, litera¬ 
ture, mathematics, French, Persian, Ara¬ 
bic, Moslem law, physics, and chemistry. 
My brother was already a student, so it 
was very easy for me to become established 
and to make friends with my teachers and 
classmates. 

Our teachers were mostly graduates of 
the University of Stamboul in Constanti¬ 
nople, but some had studied in foreign 


126 WEEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


countries. My history teacher was a 
graduate of the University of Paris and 
my physics and chemistry teacher had 
studied at the University of Lucerne. I 
enjoyed the life of the school very much. 
I made many friends, among whom were 
a number of boys who were natives of 
Brussa, and under their guidance I gained 
an intimate knowledge of the city. 

At the school I made my first acquaint¬ 
ance with football. This game had been 
introduced into Constantinople by some 
Englishmen and had become very popu¬ 
lar, gradually spreading out into the 
provinces. Each class had a team, and 
there were regular inter-class matches. I 
loved to play but never became expert 
enough to make a class team. 

The school had quite a large museum 
in which were exhibited relics of the old 
sultans. Here one could find their clothes, 
swords, saddles, coffee cups, firmans 
(written decrees), etc. Here, too, were 
numerous Greek statues which had been 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 127 


dug up in and about the city. It was al¬ 
most impossible to dig the foundation for 
a building in any part of the city without 
discovering some remains of the old Greek 
civilization. 

Brussa also had a military school, a 
normal school for teachers, an agricultural 
school, and a school of silk culture. 
The silk industry is the most important 
one in the city. Surrounding the city 
there are great groves of mulberry trees 
and enormous quantities of silkworms are 
raised. In the city itself there are nu¬ 
merous factories where the cocoons are 
spun out into thread and the thread woven 
into silk cloth. Brussa silk is famous 
throughout the world for its strength and 
beauty. In the bazaars of the city, mash- 
laks, towels, and innumerable other arti¬ 
cles made from silk can be purchased. 

A half-hour outside of the city are nu¬ 
merous hot springs. Here large baths 
have been built, and people come from all 
over Asia Minor and even from Europe 


128 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


to take the baths, as they are supposed to 
be very efficient in the curing of certain 
illnesses. About half-way between the 
city and the baths there is a statue built 
over what is supposedly the tomb of 
Kara-geuz. It has been built by a news¬ 
paper of Constantinople which bears his 
name and which is very widely read. In 
this paper Kara-geuz comments each week 
on politics in a humorous manner with his 
friend Hadji Aivat who is said to occupy 
the tomb with him. In the city itself as 
well as in the country surrounding it are 

every der¬ 
vish order is represented. 

One of my Brussa friends was the son 
of a wealthy man who was extremely con¬ 
servative and lived according to the old 
customs. He had three wives, and it may 
interest you to have a description of his 
home as it contained a “ harem,” the in¬ 
stitution about which the foreigner visit¬ 
ing Turkey usually inquires first. 

My friend’s home was entered by a gate 


numerous tekkes. Practically 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 129 


which opened into a large court. At the 
left side of the court was a two-story 
building. This building was known as the 
“ Selamlik ” or place of reception. En¬ 
tering the lower floor, one found himself in 
a salon with rugs on the floor and a num¬ 
ber of low divans against the walls. Two 
rooms led off from this salon. One of 
these was a servant’s room where coffee 
was prepared for the guests, and the other 
was the office of the master of the house. 
The upper story of the building was 
reached by a stairway on the outside and 
contained the sleeping quarters of the men 
of the family. On the side of the yard 
opposite 'the “ Selamlik ” was a one-story 
building in which the men-servants lived. 
Opposite the gate leading to the street 
there was a high wall in which there was 
a wooden door. This door led into an¬ 
other courtyard in the center of which 
there was a fountain. As the outer court 
had on one side the “ Selamlik ” and on 
the other the quarters of the men-servants, 


130 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

so this inner one had on one side the 
“ Haremlik ” or place of the harem and 
on the other the quarters of the women- 
servants. No men other than members 
of the family could enter the inner court¬ 
yard. In the wall separating the two was 
a revolving cupboard. If a man-servant 
wished to deliver something to a woman- 
servant, he put it in the cupboard, which 
was then turned and the woman-servant 
removed the object when it presented it¬ 
self at the other side of the wall. The two 
servants could converse together but could 
not see each other. This whole arrange¬ 
ment is quite typical of the old houses of 
the wealthy Turks in the provincial cities. 

In 1911 a great epidemic of cholera 
broke out in Brussa. About two thousand 
people died during the summer. I ran 
away from the school and returned to 
Kemer. My father then sent me to a 
school in the Island of Mitylene, which 
at that time was Turkish, although since 
turned over to Greece. I remained here 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 131 


two years, and in 1913 I was sent to the 
Mekteb Harbie, the famous military 
school at Constantinople, to study to be 
an officer in the army. 

To describe to you adequately the im¬ 
pression that Constantinople made on me 
when I first visited it as a boy of eighteen 
years is beyond my skill. Brussa, had 
seemed to me a marvellous and wonderful 
place, but in comparison to Constantinople 
it seemed small and insignificant. It was 
not until a number of weeks after my ar¬ 
rival that I could walk about the city with¬ 
out a feeling of awe. The great crowds of 
people, the numerous large shops, the 
colossal mosques, and the harbor full of 
ships all made me feel very humble. But 
as time passed these strange sights became 
ordinary, and I settled down and felt al¬ 
most as much at home as if I had been 
back in Kemer. 

Constantinople is situated at the point 
where the Bosphorus meets the Sea of 
Marmora. The original city, which was 


132 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


founded in 657 b. c. by adventurous mer¬ 
chants from Argos and Magara near 
Athens, was known as Byzantium. It was 
built on a peninsula jutting out into the 
Sea of Marmora from the European 
mainland. On the northern side of this 
peninsula there is a gulf having the shape 
of a ram’s horn and known as the Golden 
Horn. Some say it is so called because 
of the great riches contained in the boats 
which were anchored here in the heydey 
of the Byzantine Empire, while others 
say it is due to the golden reflection of the 
setting sun in the waters of the gulf. The 
city has long outgrown its original site. 
Its great growth dates from 330 a. d. 
when Constantine the Great, Emperor of 
the Roman Empire, chose Byzantium as 
the site of his new capital, and it is from 
him that the city takes its present name. 

To-day the original peninsula is known 
as Stamboul and is largely inhabited by 
Turks. Here are most of the great 
mosques, including Aya Sofia, which was 



Looking up the Bosphorus from Stamboul. 
The Galata Bridge is on the left. 










BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 133 

a Christian church before the capture of 
the city by Mohammed II in 1453. Here, 
too, are most of the government buildings 
and the old palace of the sultans as well 
as the grand bazaars. 

On the other side of the Golden Horn, 
and connected with Stamboul by two 
bridges, is Galata, the part of the city in 
which most of the banks, shipping com¬ 
panies, and wholesale merchants are lo¬ 
cated. On a hill above Galata is the 
European quarter of Pera. Here are the 
large modern shops, hotels, and apart¬ 
ment houses. The inhabitants of this part 
of the city are largely Europeans and na¬ 
tive Armenians and Greeks. 

Stamboul, Galata, and Pera are the 
three principal parts of the city, but oppo¬ 
site them on the Asiatic side of the 
straights are the important suburbs of 
Scutari and Kadikeuy, and strung along 
both sides of the Bosphorus are numerous 
suburban communities. 

It has been truly said that in Constan- 


134 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


tinople the East meets the West. As you 
stand at the Galata bridge and watch the 
crowds going back and forth between the 
two great quarters of the city, you vividly 
appreciate this. Men of every race and 
nationality, many in their native costumes, 
hurry past, each intent upon his own af¬ 
fairs. In many parts of the city, the 
Moslem mosque, the Christian church, and 
the Jewish synagogue are but a stone’s 
throw from one another. Within the 
communities whose names these various 
houses of worship bear there are found 
numerous subdivisions. The Moslem 
community is divided into Sunnees, 
Shiahs, and other sects, the Christian 
community into Orthodox, Gregorian, 
Catholic, and the various Protestant 
groups, and the Jewish community into 
the Orthodox and Reformed parties. 
Most of these have their own schools. It 
is this diversification, this lack of unity, 
this great conglomeration of different na¬ 
tionalities, various races, divers languages, 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 135 


and antagonistic faiths that is the most 
striking thing about the city. 

At the Mekteb Harbie there were about 
two thousand students. We lived in bar¬ 
racks and our life was entirely a military 
one. Because of my knowledge of horses 
I was assigned to the cavalry. We had 
very fine horses and we soon learned to 
manoeuver with great skill and precision. 
Our teachers were kind and intelligent. 
Many had been educated at the famous 
French military academy at St. Cyr, and 
others in various military schools in Ger¬ 
many. One evening in Ramazan we all 
went together to take dinner at the Dolma 
Bagtche Palace as guests of the Sultan. 
This palace is a very large one, beautifully 
situated on the edge of the Bosphorus. 
There was a full moon and the garden of 
the palace and the adjoining waters were 
illuminated by its silver rays. The Sultan 
sat upon a throne set up in the garden. 
He was a very fat man with a yellow 
parched skin, not at all the kind of a man 


136 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


you would expect a sultan to be. His eyes 
were watery and had a frightened look. 
It is said that he was not absolutely sane, 
his mind having been affected by the many 
years’ imprisonment he suffered while his 
brother Abdul Hamid was sultan. He 
watched us disinterestedly as we ate, 
drank, and talked. Before leaving we 
each received a half of a gold pound and 
the officers received a whole gold pound. 
This is called dish-kir-rasse which means 
literally “ payment for teeth,” and follow¬ 
ing an old custom it is paid by the Sultan 
to all who dine with him. 

On numerous occasions we acted as the 
guard of honor when the Sultan went to 
public prayers. This ceremony is known 
as the “ Selamlik ” and takes place every 
Friday at noon. The Sultan resided at 
the Yildiz palace, one of his many man¬ 
sions in Constantinople, and worshipped 
in the mosque adjoining the palace. We 
drew up in military formation on both 
sides of the road leading from the palace 


BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 137 


to the mosque and stood at attention as 
the Sultan went by in his carriage. 
Crowds of people used to come on these 
occasions to see their spiritual and tem¬ 
poral chief, for the Sultan in addition to 
being head of the state was also, as Caliph 
of Islam, the head of the faithful through¬ 
out the world. The Caliph still claims in 
the Moslem world a position similar to that 
of the Pope in the Christian, and as all 
Christians do not recognize the spiritual 
authority of the Pope, so all Moslems do 
not recognize that of the Caliph. 

To a stranger in Constantinople, the 
section of the city that is most interesting 
is Stamboul. Therefore I will describe 
to you a few of its most important fea¬ 
tures. In the daytime the center of life 
in Stamboul is the grand bazaars. These 
consist of a number of acres of covered 
streets lined on both sides with hundreds 
of tiny shops. The streets are often small, 
narrow, and crooked and are lighted by 
occasional skylights of dirty glass. The 


138 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


entire place is pervaded by a musty odor 
like that of a mushroom cellar. The num¬ 
ber and sorts of articles offered for sale 
is bewildering. Here you can buy any¬ 
thing from old coins to the latest toy from 
Berlin or the most recent innovation in 
safety razors from the United States. 
Whole streets are given over to the sale 
of spices, brass utensils, antiquities, 
sweets, bedding, rugs, etc., etc. The 
bazaars present as varied an aspect as the 
population of the city to whose needs they 
minister. If you intend to make a pur¬ 
chase, you should not be in a hurry. The 
Oriental enjoys a bargain and he does not 
like to be hurried in it any more than does 
the man who is eating a delicious dish. 
Before beginning business it is customary 
to offer the client a coffee and cigarette. 
While smoking and drinking, the weather, 
politics, and similar subjects are legiti¬ 
mate items of conversation. When the 
cigarette is almost consumed, it is proper 
for the client to show a mild interest in 



Section of the Ghand Bazaar of Stamboul. 






BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 139 


the article he wishes to purchase. He 
may tell of similar articles he has seen in 
the bazaars of other cities or that his 
friends have purchased, politely empha¬ 
sizing their superiority over the article he 
desires as well as the ridiculously small 
price at which they were sold. After 
much of this, he may finally demand the 
price of the desired object but without 
showing any eagerness to make a pur¬ 
chase. The shop-owner will name a 
figure, but state that if the client thinks 
of purchasing, he will make a slight sac¬ 
rifice to an old friend. This sort of 
repartee keeps up until the article is 
finally sold at about half the price orig¬ 
inally asked. If a rug or other object of 
some value is to be purchased, the bargain¬ 
ing often extends over numerous visits. 

Another familiar sight of Stamboul are 
the beautiful fountains belonging to the 
various mosques. They are usually of 
elaborately carved marble, the carving re¬ 
sembling fine lace-work. These fountains 


140 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


represent the best achievements of Turk¬ 
ish art. They all bear numerous inscrip¬ 
tions from the Koran and occasionally a 
poem in Turkish. The poem on the foun¬ 
tain of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed ends 
as follows: 

“ Open the faucet with a 4 Bismillah, 5 (in the 
name of God) 

Drink the water, and pray for Sultan 
Ahmed. ” 

As the majority of the great mosques 
of Stamboul have been built by Sultans, 
there is usually found adjoining them the 
tombs of their builders. These tombs are 
exceedingly interesting. They are usu¬ 
ally entered by an iron gate over which 
there are inscriptions from the Koran 
which are cut in the stone. Inside, in the 
center of each tomb there is a large 
wooden box with sloping sides, which is 
covered by a silk shawl. At the one end 
of this box is a stick bearing a red fez 
around which is wound a white turban. 


BKUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 141 


This is the coffin representing the dead 
Sultan. It does not actually contain his 
body, for that is buried in the ground be¬ 
low. Surrounding this large central 
coffin are usually three or four other ones 
of the same size but without turbans. 
These are the coffins of the Sultan’s wives. 
Surrounding these there are anywhere 
from ten to thirty smaller ones, some with 
and some without turbans. These are the 
coffins of the Sultan’s children. You 
might wonder, judging by the size of the 
latter, if all these children died in their 
infancy. I cannot give you exact infor¬ 
mation on this point, but I can tell you 

that in our historv it has been the rule for a 

•/ 

new Sultan on coming to the throne to kill 
all the male descendants of his predeces¬ 
sor. The reason for this was that the suc¬ 
cession to the Sultanate was not from fa¬ 
ther to oldest son as is usually the case 
with imperial families, hut from the oldest 
surviving member of the house of Othman 
to the next oldest member. Thus a Sultan 


142 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

to assure the succession to his own children 
had to put out of the way all his cousins, 
brothers, uncles, etc., that were in line to 
the succession ahead of his sons. Also if 
there was no one to take his place there 
was little likelihood of his being over¬ 
thrown by a coup d’etat. During the last 
century, instead of destroying dangerous 
rivals the Sultans have kept them in 
prison. I have already told you how 
Abdul Hamid II kept his brother, who 
became Sultan with the title of Mo¬ 
hammed V, a prisoner for the greater part 
of his life. 

The glory of Stamboul is in its mosques. 
These with their massive domes and tall 
minarets dominate every quarter. Their 
interiors are masterpieces of arabesque 
decoration. No figure of man or animal 
or any design using these as a motive can 
be found. Such figures and designs 
would smack of idol-worship, the destruc¬ 
tion of which Mohammed regarded as his 
especial duty. The decorations consist of 



The Fountain of the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed. 



The Tomb of Sultan Selim in Stamboul. 

The large coffin with the turban is that of the Sultan. The other large 
ones are those of his wives; the small ones with turbans are 
those of his sons, and the small ones without turbans 
are those of his daughters. The bodies are not in 
the coffins, but in the ground below them. 
























BRUSSA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 143 


geometrical designs of great variety of 
line and color, and of texts chosen from the 
Koran. These are often in gold and have 
a beauty of form that it is difficult to be¬ 
lieve can be given to writing by one who 
knows only the alphabets of the West. 
Truly these great mosques are fit places 
for man to approach God. 




/ 


CHAPTER IX 

AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 

In this chapter I will give a brief sur¬ 
vey and interpretation of the history of 
the Ottoman Turks so that you may bet¬ 
ter understand the events that are occur¬ 
ring in Turkey to-day. The character of 
any people depends on their inheritance 
and environment and though I have told 
you a great deal of the environment of 
the Turkish people, I have said but little 
about their inheritance. 

About the middle of the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury a small band of nomad Turks mi¬ 
grated from Khorassan in Central Asia 
into Asia Minor. They had been driven 
from their homeland by an invading horde 
of Mongols from farther east. When the 
wave of Mongols had spent its force, some 

of these Turks returned to Khorassan, but 

144 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 145 


a small group of about four hundred and 
twenty families under the leadership of 
two brothers, Ertogroul and Dundar, con¬ 
tinued westward. 

Asia Minor at this time was made up of 
a number of small states of Seljuk Turks 
who had come into the country about three 
hundred years before. They, too, had 
come from Central Asia. Previous to 
their coming, all of Asia Minor had be¬ 
longed to the Byzantine Empire, but the 
southern boundaries of this state had been 
gradually pushed back so they included at 
this time only a narrow belt of territory 
along the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, 
and the Dardanelles, in which were 
situated the cities of Brussa, Niceea, and 
Nicomedia. The remainder of the country 
had been conquered by the Seljuk Turks, 
who had intermixed with the native popu¬ 
lation and imposed upon them the Turkish 
language and, to a large extent, the Mo¬ 
hammedan faith, which they had probably 
acquired from the Persians. No doubt 


146 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


Ertogroul and his followers were con¬ 
verted to Islam by the Seljuks. In one 
of the many struggles between the various 
Seljukian states, Ertogroul aided the 
Sultan Allaedin of Konia. As a reward 
he was granted a small piece of territory, 
about sixty miles southeast of Brussa, 
where he and his people settled down to a 
pastoral life. When he died, his son Oth- 
man was chosen by the clan to succeed him. 
It is from Othman, the first Sultan, that 
we take the name of Ottoman Turks and 
it was he, a much more ambitious man than 
his father, who was the founder of the 
Ottoman Empire. 

With Othman began the great period 
of conquest which lasted three hundred 
years. During this period ten Sultans 
held the throne, and each one extended the 
boundaries of the empire until towards the 
end of the sixteenth century, shortly after 
the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, 
the tenth Sultan and by many judged the 
greatest, it consisted of: (1) in Asia: the 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 147 


whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopota¬ 
mia, Arabia, and the Caucasus; (2) in 
Europe: the northern littoral of the Black 
Sea, all the islands of the iEgean Sea, 
the entire Balkan Peninsula, the greater 
part of Hungary, the whole of what is 
to-day Roumania as well as a goodly part 
of what is to-day South Russia, and (3) 
in Africa: the whole of Egypt, Tripoli, 
Tunis, and Algeria. 

What were the reasons for this great 
and rapid growth? It was largely due to 
the ability of the first ten Sultans. They 
were all men of tremendous vitality, ex¬ 
ceptional organizing ability, and military 
genius. They were aided by the rivalry 
and hatred between the Roman and Greek 
churches, which prevented the nations of 
the West from coming to the aid of the 
Byzantine Empire. Also the long strug¬ 
gle between the Bulgarian Empire and 
the Byzantine Empire had greatly weak¬ 
ened both; the various Seljukian states of 
Asia Minor after many years of inter- 


148 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

necine warfare were no match for the 
virile Ottomans. 

Thus you see that the first three hun¬ 
dred years of our history were given over 
to the conquering of our empire. The 
second three hundred years were given 
over to defending it. In this we were 
not so successful, and to-day, a little more 
than three hundred and fifty years after 
the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, 
the Ottoman Empire no longer exists. 
The only remnant is the modern state of 
Turkey which is restricted to Constan¬ 
tinople, Eastern Thrace, and Asia Minor. 

What were the reasons for this great 
and rapid decay? Principally the de¬ 
generation of the imperial family. Since 
Suleiman the Magnificent, there have been 
twenty-six Sultans on the throne, of whom 
only one, Mahmoud the Reformer, showed 
to even a slight degree the great qualities 
that the first ten Sultans possessed so 
generously. As the Ottoman Empire 
was an absolute despotism, everything de- 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 149 


pended upon the character of the despot. 
It was only after the Revolution of 1908 
that the Sultan’s powers were in any way 
restricted. Since November 22, 1922, the 
office of Sultan no longer exists. Turkey 
at that time became a democracy, but the 
empire was then already lost. 

From the above short outline you can 
see that our entire history has been one of 
war. Except for the Turks who were 
farmers and shepherds in the homeland 
of Anatolia, we were a people of soldiers 
and officials. We ruled over a great mass 
of foreign people, and this required in¬ 
numerable governors, vice-governors, etc. 
As our central government was a despot¬ 
ism, so the governments of all the prov¬ 
inces and states tended to become despot¬ 
isms. The men who were sent out from 
Constantinople to govern various sections 
and peoples could do largely as they 
pleased as long as they sent in to the 
Sultan the required amount of tribute each 
year. As a result of this system some 


150 WHEN 1 WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


parts of the empire were well governed 
while others were badly governed, de¬ 
pending on the character of the local 
governor. Naturally with the degenera¬ 
tion of the central despot, the character of 
the minor despots also degenerated until 
finally most of the provinces were ruled 
by men interested only in lining their 
purses with gold. 

Because of this misgovernment and the 
spreading of the ideas of liberty after the 
French Revolution, the subject people 
began to revolt, and gradually with the 
aid of France, England, and Russia, a 
number won their independence. First 
Serbia, then Greece, followed by Bulgaria, 
Roumania, and Albania broke away from 
Turkish rule. In trying to repress these 
revolutions against their authority the 
Turks often used barbarous methods, 
massacring great numbers of the inhab¬ 
itants. This was to be expected of a 
people whose whole history has been made 
up of incessant warfare and whose religion 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 151 

does not condemn the use of force but 
advocates it. The Western powers in 
aiding the subject people to gain their 
independence hardly acted from disin¬ 
terested motives. Of former parts of the 
Ottoman Empire, France now rules over 
Algeria, Tunis, and Syria; England over 
Cyprus, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopo¬ 
tamia; Russia over the Crimea, the Cau¬ 
casus, and part of Armenia; and Italy 
over Tripoli, Rhodes, and the Dodecanese 
Islands. Those people who have actually 
gained their independence probably owe 
it largely to the fact that these great 
powers could not agree as to which one 
should rule them after the Turks had been 
ousted. 

Within the old Turkish Empire there 
was a very interesting arrangement by 
which the non-Moslem people were al¬ 
lowed a certain degree of autonomy. 
When Mohammed II conquered Con¬ 
stantinople he acquired with the city a 
great number of Greek, Jewish, Ar- 


152 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


menian, and foreign subjects. His own 
people were ruled by Moslem law. It 
was evidently impossible to rule these 
non-Moslem people by the same law, so 
he allowed to continue in operation a 
Byzantine custom by which foreigners 
were governed as to education, marriage, 
inheritance, etc., by representatives of 
their own countries. Mohammed made 
the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, 
the Armenian Patriarch of Constanti¬ 
nople, and the Grand Rabbi of Constanti¬ 
nople, the political as well as the religious 
heads of all the Greeks, Armenians, and 
Jews in the empire. Every other relig¬ 
ious community also had a political as 
well as religious chief in the capital city. 
The consuls of foreign countries served 
in the same capacity for their nationals 
who resided in the empire. 

By this arrangement the local non- 
Moslem communities operated their own 
schools, churches, and ecclesiastical courts, 
and kept all records of births, marriages, 


AN HISTORICAL CHARTER 153 


deaths, etc. It was a very satisfactory 
arrangement and was largely responsible 
for the fact that the Ottoman Empire held 
together as long as it did. It kept the 
non-Moslem people fairly satisfied and 
gave them an avenue by which they could 
present their difficulties directly to the 
central government in Constantinople 
without going through the local Moslem 
governors. Thus it also tended to 
limit the oppression of these local des¬ 
pots. 

However, with the growth of the idea 
of nationality in the West following the 
French Revolution, the Christian people 
were not satisfied with these privileges; 
they wanted complete independence. As 
you have seen, many of them won it. But 
how grant complete independence to those 
Christians in Constantinople and Asia 
Minor who were intermixed with the 
Moslem people where the latter were in 
the majority? The Turkish answer to 
this question has been to eliminate these 


154 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


non-Moslem minorities from among them 
by massacre and deportation. These 
poor people have been the unfortunate 
victims of the Westernization of Turkey. 
Turkey could not become a nation in the 
Western sense (a unity in language, senti¬ 
ment, race, and religion) while these 
people remained in the country. They 
could not be Turkified, as for example the 
immigrants that enter the United States 
are Americanized. The best solution of 
the problem would no doubt have been for 
them to be transmigrated to some other 
land. It is interesting to note that at the 
Peace Conference at Lausanne following 
the Greco-Turkish war which ended in the 
fall of 1922 , the Greeks and Turks signed 
an agreement by which the Turks of 
Greek Macedonia were to be interchanged 
with the Greeks remaining in Asia Minor. 
This is probably hard upon these people, 
but until we learn to live with one another 
in peace and tolerance, regardless of dif¬ 
ferences in race, nationality, language, or 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 155 


religion, there does not seem to be any 
other way out. 

The Revolution of 1908 had for its 
ideal a New Turkey in which all the dif¬ 
ferent peoples of various religions and 
nationalities would live together as Otto¬ 
mans. The corrupt and oppressive Sul¬ 
tan Abdul Hamid was forced to grant a 
constitution and a year later to abdicate in 
favor of his brother. Everybody was en¬ 
thusiastic and believed that a new era had 
opened. Unfortunately it was not long 
before the old hates and suspicions began 
to show themselves and soon conditions 
were worse than ever before. The people 
had a vision and when they saw it would 
not become a reality (no one would sacri¬ 
fice anything towards its realization, all 
considering the new regime as a means of 
gaining their separate interests) in their 
disillusion they proceeded to accuse one 
another of being responsible for the fail¬ 
ure of their hopes. 

Thus instead of the New Turkey we 


156 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 


have had wars, massacres, and deporta¬ 
tions in rapid succession. 

I would like to tell you something of 
Turkey as it is to-day, but events are de¬ 
veloping so rapidly and such great and 
fundamental changes are taking place 
that there is danger of all I can say being 
out of date by the time you read this. 
The most revolutionary step in the whole 
history of Turkey was taken on Novem¬ 
ber 22nd, 1922, when the Sultanate was 
abolished and Turkey became a democ¬ 
racy. The entire powers of government, 
both legislative and executive, were given 
to the Grand National Assembly, to be 
elected by universal manhood and woman¬ 
hood suffrage. The Sultan remained 
merely as head of the Moslem church, 
keeping his title of Caliph. The political 
powers of the various church heads in 
Constantinople as well as those of the 
foreign consuls were abolished. Turkey 
has put behind her the old political insti¬ 
tutions of the Ottoman Empire and has 


AN HISTORICAL CHAPTER 157 


taken over bodily the political institutions 
of the West. However, if democracy is 
to function properly, the people must be 
educated, and until the people of Turkey 
are educated, her so-called democracy 
will merely be a sham, the government 
resting in the hands of the most powerful 
individual or group of individuals in the 
state. At present this group is the 
group which controls the army. Their 
sincerity for the establishment of a real 
democracy will be judged by the steps 
they take towards giving Turkey a good, 
free, and universally compulsory system 
of education. The Turkish people are 
worthy of good government. They as 
well as the Christians, Jews, and other in¬ 
habitants of the country have suffered 
tremendously from the misgovernment of 
the past. May the future hold happier 
days for them! 


CHAPTER X 


ABOUT MYSELF 

On graduating from the Mekteb 
Harbie I was commissioned a second 
lieutenant in the gendarmes and was sent 
to Sivas, a city in Eastern Asia Minor, to 
serve in policing the surrounding country. 
At this time Turkey had already entered 
the Great War as an ally of Germany. 
The country was an armed camp. In 
every city soldiers were being enlisted, 
trained, and shipped away to the various 
fronts. German officers had entered the 
country in great numbers to help organize 
all its resources for the purposes of war. 

In May, 1915, I was at Torkat, a town 

not far from Sivas, when I received orders 

to report to Captain Saadedin Bey, the 

commander of the gendarmerie for my 

district. On my way to headquarters I 

158 


ABOUT MYSELF 


159 


heard a great deal of shooting in the 
mountains and hills, and on inquiring the 
cause, I was told that the gendarmes were 
hunting down Armenians who had es¬ 
caped from the towns and villages. I was 
greatly surprised, as up to this time the 
relations between the native Turks and 
Armenians had seemed to be quite 
friendly. 

On arriving in Sivas, I discovered that 
conditions were very bad. A great many 
of the Armenians were in prison. From 
here they were being deported into the 
country in groups of forty and fifty, each 
group under the guard of an officer and 
six to ten gendarmes. In the bazaars 
and mosques of the city there were nu¬ 
merous immams from Constantinople ha¬ 
ranguing the Mohammedans. They said 
that the Armenians had been discovered 
plotting against the government, and that 
as they were thus guilty of treason they 
should be put to death. These immams 
had evidently been sent out by the central 


160 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

government to stir up the religious and 
nationalistic passions of the people. Ac¬ 
cording to the Mohammedan faith, a non- 
Moslem in a Moslem state has no rights 
or privileges except as they are granted 
to him by Moslems. A non-Moslem is 
called “ gia(v)our ” or infidel. He is 
allowed to live and work in the Moslem 
state as long as he is tolerated by the Sul¬ 
tan. Once this toleration is revoked, the 
infidel can be killed, and by Moslem law 
it is not murder. Also his property can 
be stolen, and it is not theft. Naturally 
with such a belief to work upon, it was 

easy for these immams from Constanti- 

•/ 

nople speaking in the name of the Sultan 
to stir the simple Turks of the country to 
deeds df great cruelty against the hated 
infidels. 

Captain Saadedin Bey ordered me to 
take a group of Armenians from the 
prison into the mountains and to see that 
they were killed. I refused. He then 
imprisoned me for three days. On the 



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ABOUT MYSELF 


161 


third day I was brought before the vali or 
governor of the province whose name was 
Mommer Bey. He threatened me with 
court-martial if I did not obey the instruc¬ 
tions of the captain. Realizing that dis¬ 
obedience would not help the Armenians 
any and would put me in a position which 
would make it impossible for me to aid 
them in the future, I took thirty-three 
Armenians from the city prison and with 
ten gendarmes conducted them to Sou- 
Chehir, four days from Sivas on foot. 
On the road many Turks came to attack 
our prisoners as they had done with the 
prisoners ahead of us and whose bodies 
we had seen lying along the roadside. 
However, I managed to prevent any harm 
from coming to them. We brought them 
to the mountains and there they were set 
free to live as best they could until the 
time came when their persecution would 
end or until they could escape from the 
country. The gendarmes who were Kurds, 
a wild mountain people who live on the 


162 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

borders of Turkey and Persia, then dis¬ 
persed. I returned to Sivas and told the 
captain that the Armenians had been dis¬ 
posed of. Unfortunately, three days later 
one of my gendarmes returned and told 
the truth. The vali as a punishment sent 
me to Erzeroum on the Russian front. 
On my way there I passed on the road 
many hundreds of dead. 

Two days from Sivas as I was ap¬ 
proaching the town of Zara I saw a num¬ 
ber of Turkish villagers attack two Ar¬ 
menians who were driving along the road 
in a cart. I managed to prevent their 
being killed, although they were badly cut 
and bruised before I could reach them. I 
turned them over to Houssein Bey, a 
doctor of Zara who treated their wounds 
but scorned me for protecting the infidels. 
The people of the town were very angry 
with me and said, “ Perhaps you are your¬ 
self an Armenian.” Both the Mayor of 
Zara and the Vali of Sivas sent telegrams 
to Ivemer to ask if Lieutenant Ahmed 


ABOUT MYSELF 163 

Sabri was from a Moslem or a Christian 
family. When they received a reply to 
the effect that I was a Moslem and from 
a prominent family they took no action 
against me. 

After four months at the front I be¬ 
came very ill and was sent to Samsoun, 
a seaport on the Black Sea about four 
hundred miles from Constantinople. 
Here there was a large Greek population, 
at that time on fairly good terms with the 
Turks. I made the acquaintance of many 
of these Greeks. After my convalescence 
I was assigned to duty at Chabib-Kara- 
Hissar. Here I was often able to prevent 
the persecution of the Christians, and as 
a result I came to know the head of the 
Greek Church in this city, the Metropoli¬ 
tan Sophronious. I went to visit him 
often and he gave me a copy of the New 
Testament. In reading this I received 
my first knowledge of the real Jesus and 
learned how different he was from the 
Jesus the Moslems know. My frequent 


164 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY 

visits to the Metropolitan caused much 
suspicion among the Turks and as a re¬ 
sult I was transferred to Kauza, a small 
town about thirty miles northeast of the 
city of Marsovan. 

The Episcopas Aristias Ierotheos, head 
of the Greek Church of Kauza, became 
my friend. He had been informed of my 
coming by the Metropolitan of Chabib- 
Kara-Hissar. My study of the Gospels 
was greatly facilitated by this friendship. 
I remained at Kauza until the end of the 
war except for a short stay in a hospital 
at Marsovan. With the defeat of Tur¬ 
key and the end of hostilities, numerous 
British officers came into the country and 
proceeded to disarm the people. The 
Turks of the town because of my friend¬ 
ship with the Christians began to menace 
me. A Turkish friend told me of a plot 
against my life. Realizing that the ha¬ 
tred against me was growing greater 
every day, I left Kauza and made my way 
to Constantinople. From Constantinople 


ABOUT MYSELF 


165 


I went to Smyrna and then to Athens 
where I was baptized. In brief, these are 
the events leading up to the public pro¬ 
fession of my belief in Jesus and of my 
desire to be one of his followers. 

To-day I am an exile from my native 
land. Unfortunately my countrymen 
have not as yet learned to tolerate among 
them those of their own kind who think 
and believe differently from what they do. 
Towards these they are more intolerant 
than towards those who are of a different 
race and nationality. May I not in clos¬ 
ing make a plea? May the boys of all the 
world learn to know, understand, and love 
one another regardless of differences in 
race, religion, nationality, class, or beliefs! 


HITAM 










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